Overview Individual sentences express complete thoughts, and individual paragraphs support main ideas. The development of paragraphs flows naturally to the development of arguments to support a central idea. Paragraph Length…
read moreOverview A sentence is a group of words that form a complete thought. There are different types of sentences depending on what they contain. Complete Sentence Students are often asked…
read moreOverview Writers use basic structures to put their ideas in order and present them. Some of those basic structures include chronological, sequential, comparative, causal (or cause-and-effect), categorical, and evaluative. Chronological…
read moreOverview One of the ways to help the reader understand the points made or the direction the argument is going is by the use of transitions. Transition words and phrases…
read moreOverview Although sounds many sound the same in English, they may be spelled differently. Therefore, many words that sound similar may be spelled very differently, and any English spelling rule…
read moreOverview Rules for how numbers are expressed in print depend on the formality of the writing task. When writing is very formal, such as in a book or essay, numbers…
read moreOverview Although it is always better to avoid dividing words, English has rules about dividing words by syllables if necessary. Words of one syllable cannot be divided. Words are often…
read moreOverview Compound words in English are words that are joined into one word such as airplane, footnote, and notebook. Hyphens may be used to join adjectives used before the nouns…
read moreOverview Dashes are often used as punctuation to note a change in direction, while parentheses are used to set off material within a sentence. Both dashes and parentheses can have…
read moreOverview Quotation marks are used in many different ways in the English language, in direct quotations, and around the titles of articles, poems, and other shorter works. Italics are used…
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