Nitty Gritty Grammar Concerns and Polishing your Prose

"A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned." ~George Bernard Shaw

Any concerns that you have about grammar should be taken either to your professor or to the Villanova Writing Center. Here, though, are a few suggestions for avoiding some of the most common and nefarious grammar concerns.

• Common Comma and Semi-Colon Crises
  If the rules you learned about commas and semi-colons don't mean much to you, forget them and try this: Read one of your sentences aloud and see where you would naturally pause, where you would draw a breath. If it's a short pause, like that just was, you probably need a comma. If it's a longer pause, but not quite a full stop (for which you'd need a period), you probably need a semi-colon; remember that whatever follows a semi-colon must be able to stand on its own, as a full sentence. If you don't want your reader to pause, there shouldn't be a comma, there, because as, this demonstrates it's very difficult to figure, out, what you're saying when your punctuation, makes the sentence unreadable.
  
  Your sentences shouldn't leave your reader hyperventilating from the constant shallow breaths that over-punctuation requires. Nor should they be gasping for breath at the end of a long, unpunctuated sentence. (Consider yourself responsible for your readers' cardiovascular health.)
   
• Make sure all your referents are clear.
  When you say "This theory" or "that point" or, simply, "it," is it clear which theory or point you're referring to? When you use "he" or "she" or "these critics," will your reader have to pause to figure out who all these people are?
   
• There's more to say about this.
  We often throw in a "this" when we're not entirely sure exactly what we want to draw our readers' attention to, especially when we're making a complex argument with many different elements. Sometimes vagueness in our language can be a symptom of muddled thinking. So ask yourself, what does this "this" refer to? What words would I replace it with? If you're not easily able to answer, you need to go back and work out your ideas in that section. (Readers will never understand what you mean when you don't know yourself. When you notice vague referents, or other apparently minor problems, take the opportunity to ask yourself if there might be any larger problem lurking beneath your surface error.)
   
• Never use "that" when you're referring to a person.
  "The first man that walked on the moon." "The author that she was referring to." These are people, not objects--it's insulting to call them "that." Use who or whom: "The first man who walked on the moon." "The author to whom she was referring." Are you using "that" because you're shaky on the who/whom thing? See below. (And while you're at it, consider whether you're twisting your sentences around to avoid any other grammatical points you're uncertain of. If so, take control! Liberate yourself! Learn the rules once and for all so you can write freely, instead of skulking around trying not to break the rules--or breaking them without realizing it. Try starting a text file in which you list the rules you tend to forget, and keep it open when you write. You can look rules up in any style manual, or come to the Writing Center.)
   
• Who is what doing what to whom?
  That's the question you need to ask yourself if you're uncertain which word to use. The one that does the action (the subject) is who. The one that gets something done to it (the object) is whom.
  
  (From the Harvard University Writing Center Handout "Tips on Grammar, Punctuation and Style")

Polishing your Prose

Transitions
As the writer of an essay, imagine yourself crossing a river, guiding a troop of avid readers. You bring an armful of stones to lay down and step on as you go; each stone is a sentence or paragraph that speaks to and develops the essay's thesis, or central question. If you find yourself in the middle of the river with another mile to shore but only a few more stones, you can't finesse such a situation. You can't ask your readers to follow you and jump too broad a span.

In such a case, stop. Ask yourself if you need more stones--more sentences or paragraphs--or if perhaps you have already used ones that more properly belong ahead. On a second look, you may decide that the distance between stones is not that great, after all; perhaps your reader only needs a hand of assistance to get from one stone, or paragraph, to the next. In an essay, such assistance can be offered in the form of a "furthermore" or "in addition to" or "therefore." These are called transitional words and phrases.

(Adapted from the Harvard University Writing Center Handout "Transitioning: Beware of Velcro")

Avoiding Split Infinitives
"An infinitive consists of to plus a verb: to think, to breathe, to dance. When a modifier appears between its two parts, an infinitive is said to be ‘split’: to carefully balance. If a split infinitive is obviously awkward, it should be revised." In the example, "Our chief financial officer ordered the publicity department to significantly reduce its budget," a more graceful construction would require moving "significantly" to the end of the sentence.

Mistakes were made: Passive Voice
The passive voice is a mode of phrasing sentences to exclude the active subject, replacing it instead with the object of the sentence’s action. In this case, the person or persons making the mistakes are unnamed, as far as the sentence is concerned. The passive voice has its uses. Sometimes the focus of the sentence really is on the sentence object, rather than on the acting subject.

Too often, however, users of the passive voice intend to evade a reader’s active imagination, as Reagan does [in the example in the title of this section].

The passive voice can be a cowardly way out of venturing an opinion or taking a stand. Those personal stands [I statements], however, will be the strengths of your best essay—as they are for your professors and their professional colleagues. In academic writing, when a writer has only a weak, unsubstantiated assertion to make the passive voice appears to cover up the lack of a stronger one. Remember, to use the passive voice effectively, you must use it sparingly.

(From The Princeton University Writing Center Handout "On Using the Passive Voice")