Writing for the media involves editing your own stories and the work of others. This exercise provides practice in copy editing and identifying common mistakes in grammar and style.
Readings and Resources
- Strunk, W. (1959). The Elements of Style. New York: Macmillan. Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=13752988.
Instructions
Read the following sentences and make corrections (sentences may have several errors or no errors at all). Rewrite the sentence if necessary. Use William Strunk’s Elements of Style or an English handbook as a reference for this exercise. The following problems may be found in this exercise:
- The possessive singular of nouns
- Using commas in a series
- Parenthetic expressions and commas
- Independent and dependent clauses and rules regarding commas
- Use of colons, semicolons, and dashes
- Relationship of the subject and verb number
- Proper cases of pronouns
- Dangling modifiers
- Active vs. passive voice
- Specific language
- Wordiness
- Varying sentence structure
- Verb tense shifts
- Varying sentence length
- Avoiding a succession of loose sentences
- Expressing coordinate ideas in similar form
- Maintaining verb tense
Assignment
- The attendance for Dr. Mary Morgans lecture was not encouraging but school officials continued with the program which pleased the speaker and those who did attend.
- Both countries show their goodwill when the U.S. Secretary of State and the Chinese diplomat met with olive branches.
- The hamster crawls through the plastic tubes. Almost every night, the rodent has been annoying Amy with the noise.
- Scientists have acknowledged that the ability to clone is a major breakthrough while now they seek to ban it.
- Success is measured by perseverance because of it’s importance.
- The engine was rendered completely inoperable and the parts faulty.
- In Mrs. Reedy’s class one does not chew gum because they will suffer the inevitable consequences.
- It was a memorable day when someone released a rooster in the halls of College Hall.
- Persons of the Methodist faith are meeting tomorrow at their house of worship.
- The clothes always shrink when my brothers do the laundry because they stay in the dryer too long.
