Thanks for Reading!

The Writing Center is sad to announce that our blogging days are on an indefinite hiatus. The semester is in full swing, appointments are booking up, and other projects need our attention. We are short staffed this academic year so far, and in order to keep up with what we do very well, we must say goodbye to the blog. For those of you who read the posts, thank you! It was a pleasure bringing the Dirty Dozen information to you in a different format.

We look forward to seeing you at the remainder of our Dirty Dozen series, and we look forward to working with you in consultations!

All the best,

Your MU Writing Center

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Three Common Culprits: Fragments, Fused Sentences, and Comma Splices

Ever wonder why we can't just write the way we talk? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could? For most of us, however, writing the way we talk isn’t a great idea. Just listen to Boomhower from King of the Hill as he calls 911. Can you imagine an academic paper written Boomhower style? No. Definitely not. This may be unwelcome news, but readers do have expectations of writers, and those expectations change from setting to setting. For example, if we read a creative piece—say The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain—we likely would have more patience with the material than if we read a news article in a periodical (magazine or newspaper) or a professional web page. Readers’ expectations change according to the setting. You might have a group of readers who watch Family Guy or read comic books, and those readers would still expect a more formal writing style if they read your college paper. The sentences need to be clear, first of all. ...

Things Get in the Way

Imagine this: you and your significant other are at a campus event. You can’t help but notice another person making eyes at your sweetie. In fact, you find that you are pretty upset because this person is threatening the agreement between the two of you. That agreement is, obviously, that you are a couple. A similar situation can happen in sentences when considering subject-verb agreement. In the classic Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, 4 th ed ., subject-verb agreement is described as the following: “The number of the subject determines the number of the verb” (9). Yep. Words have to agree. Agreement is paramount. When writing in English, the only numbers a writer needs to concern herself with are one—a.k.a. singular—and more than one—a.k.a. more than one. It’s pure symmetry. However, when phrases interrupt that symmetry, a Pandora’s Box of confusion springs open. The subject and verb agree in the following sentence: Corey loves beating Michel at Call of Du...

On Writing... (#1) - compiled by Sue Ledger

Start writing a new chapter, for if you live by the book you'll never make history. - Ben Sobel There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. - Benjamin Disraeli No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. - Booker Taliaferro Washington I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. - Brenda Ueland Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. - Christina Baldwin Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you. - Cyril Connolly Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again. - Delmore Schwartz Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treache...

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