Try as we may, humans are never perfect. You will forget some rules, and you will be occasionally stumped. This is normal. When this happens, it is necessary to have resources at do my essay with professional writing services. Luckily, there are more than just style manuals at our disposal today. Smartphone applications, reference cards, and even the Internet can be helpful in determining the proper use of language. Just remember that, as in any other instance, a good student always checks his or her sources.
DON'T: End sentences with prepositions
There is a good amount of debate about this old rule's use, but it's always good to know. The idea is simply to cut out unnecessary prepositions. In the question, "Where are you going to?", the ending word is completely unnecessary, and yet many of us use it. Ending the sentence in the word "going" would give the same information, but without the bad grammar. On the other hand, many sentences are perfectly fine using an ending preposition. "Where are you from?" is a good example. The trick is knowing when that ending preposition changes the meaning of the sentence.
DON'T: Overuse/underuse the comma
Some of the most common mistakes I have seen in written work are the overuse or underuse of the comma. While there are dozens of examples of each, suffice it to say that the comma is one tool in a very big toolbox. When underused, it is often badly replaced with words like "and" to string together thoughts. When overused, it is used to replace the colon, semicolon, and parentheses.
DON'T: Use sentence fragments
This is a rule that most of us know and almost all of us ignore on a daily basis. In response to the question "Where are you going?", the simplest, shortest reply seems to be "To the store." This is, unfortunately, bad grammar. In today's world of texting and tweeting, sentence fragments wiggle their way into our lives all the time. They're not mortal sins of grammar, but they are best left to the spoken word. In fact, the popular playwright David Mamet fills his plays with sentence fragments because this mimics spoken American English more closely. In written work, however, they are particularly noticeable and frowned upon. Every teacher I've worked with cringes at their mere existence.
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