GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing: A Practical Self-Guide To Writing Gold-Winning Sentences

Chapter One

INTRODUCING GOLD-WINNING SENTENCES

And we cannot be effective writers without writing effective sentences.

Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences

INTRODUCTION

Do you write essays, reports, theses, and term papers in your course of study? Do you write book reviews, articles, editorials, academic papers, business letters, or technical reports in your job? If you write one or more of these pieces, then GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing has been written specially for you.

The major objective of GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing is to show you, step by step, how to write what I choose to call gold-winning sentences. Gold-winning sentences are well constructed sentences that contribute immensely to raising the quality of your writing and to taking your reader where you want them to go. The ability to write such sentences will help to make you a better writer and achieve your writing goals.

After studying this chapter you’ll be able to:

•describe the main features of gold-winning sentences,

•give reasons why sentences are important in whatever we write,

•state briefly what sentence combining is all about, and

•list the ways you can make the most of this book.

The main features of gold-winning sentences

Gold-winning sentences have the following features among others:

1. They are error-free.

2. They are clear.

3. They are concise.

4. They are varied.

Let us now look at these features in some detail.

Gold-winning sentences are error-free

Gold-winning sentences are free of errors. Errors in our writing are of two major types: errors in the content, and errors in the construction of sentences. Errors in the construction of sentences are of two major types. These are grammatical errors and mechanical errors. Grammatical errors occur, for instance, when we use the wrong word, or a wrong form of a word, or when we put a word or a group of words in the wrong position. Grammatical errors occur also when we combine words or groups of words that do not go together.

Mechanical errors, on the other hand, occur when we fail to use expected punctuation marks, or when we use the wrong ones, or when we make spelling mistakes in our sentences. Mechanical errors occur also when we use numbers and things like italics and abbreviations incorrectly.

Grammatical and mechanical errors will obscure the meaning of your sentences and your writing as a whole. They will adversely affect your style. They will harm your image as a writer.

Gold-winning sentences are clear.

Gold-winning sentences are clear. Your reader wants to understand you, and when a sentence is clear, it gets its point across to the reader quickly and leaves no room for ambiguity, guesswork, or misunderstanding. In other words, when a sentence is clear, the reader gets the meaning intended by the writer and this is what we all want to achieve when we write. If your writing has clarity, it says exactly what you want to say.

Gold-winning sentences are concise and contain no unnecessary words.

Gold-winning sentences contain no unnecessary words or inessential repetition. A sentence, writes William Strunk Jr. in The Elements of Style, should ‘contain no unnecessary words...for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts’.

Wordy sentences are annoying and frustrating because they make readers spend more time than necessary reading them. ‘Wordiness’, writes Robert Hartwell Fiske in The Dictionary of Concise Writing, ‘is arguably the biggest obstacle to clear writing and speaking’, and according to Thomas Jefferson, ‘The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words where one will do’.

Gold-winning sentences are varied.

Gold-winning sentences have different structures and different lengths. Some begin with noun phrases and some begin with clauses, for instance. Some are long and some are short. Some break out of the normal order of words in a sentence and some omit words or groups of words that readers can easily figure out by themselves. All these variations in sentence construction help to make our writing interesting and a pleasure to read, and to showcase you as a crafty writer. Besides, nobody wants to read something monotonous.

The importance of sentences in our writing

Sentences are important in writing for many reasons. The first reason is that most of the things we write consist of sentences. For instance, letters, essays, reviews, reports, articles, and academic papers all consist of sentences. When we write any of these pieces, we make two important choices. First, we choose what to say, and next, we choose how to say it, and how to say it involves writing sentences. In our writing we use sentences to convey facts, feelings, thoughts, intentions, and opinions. We use sentences to describe people, actions, events and situations. We use sentences to ask questions, to give commands, to persuade, to give directions. We use sentences to make requests, offers, promises and suggestions.

Another reason why sentences are important in writing is that they contribute to the overall quality of what we write. Put in another way, well-written sentences help in raising the overall quality of our writing. The style of sentences, many writers believe, contributes in making the difference between outstanding writing and low-quality writing. If your essay is clear to your reader, for instance, it is not only because your ideas, thoughts, arguments and opinions are clear in your head, but also because the sentences you use to express these ideas, thoughts, etc., are clear to your readers. On the other hand, if your sentences are badly written, they will pollute your writing, reduce its quality, cause your reader to miss the points you are making, and render your writing ineffective.

To summarise, your sentences can raise or reduce the quality of your writing, and acquiring the skill of writing gold-winning sentences is an important step in producing great pieces of writing. ‘In any field, the person who can deliver a clear and readable document quickly has an invaluable skill’, states Joseph M. Williams in his book Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. This invaluable skill, in my opinion, includes writing gold-winning sentences.

The sentence combining approach

GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing uses the sentence combining approach to help you write gold-winning sentences.

Sentence combining, simply defined, is the technique of combining two or more short sentences to form one sentence, usually a longer and more complex or complicated one. This technique involves using embedding, deletion, subordination and coordination.

The main reason for using the sentence combining approach is that researchers have found it more effective than the traditional grammar method in teaching people how to write mature and effective sentences. I use maturity here to refer to the ability to write sentences that compare favourably to those written by experienced writers.

Another reason for using this approach is that sometimes we have to combine sentences in order to avoid the monotony that would arise if all our sentences are short. ‘Skill in sentence combining is the mark of a good writer’, says Edgar L. Baker, and rightly so, in his book The Essentials of English.

The sentence combining approach used in this book shows you how to:

a. construct basic and composite sentences,

b. produce more mature sentences instead of the very short and choppy sentences produced by children and immature adult writers,

c. write a variety of sentences that make a piece of writing interesting and a pleasure to read,

d. explore the sentence (syntactic) options available to you as you write,

e. revise your written work and make it better,

f. develop a personal style that embodies clear, diverse, efficient and interesting sentences.

The sentence combining racecourse

In this book, I begin the sentence combining approach by introducing the basic sentences to you and by showing you how to construct them. A basic sentence, which is also called a kernel sentence, has only the parts or elements that it must have for it to pass as a sentence and no extras. Before dealing with basic sentences, I have to make sure that you can identify the different word classes we use to build sentences, for if you cannot, you will find it difficult to understand the sentence combining methods explained in the book.

Basic sentences are the buildingblocks of writing, the backbone of any English sentence. They are the foundation of the longer and more complicated sentences we use in writing. These longer and complicated sentences are called non-basic sentences or transforms. They are rearrangements, expansions, modifications, or combinations of the basic sentences. Undoubtedly, a sound knowledge of basic sentences and of how they are constructed will make it easier for you to understand and apply the processes of sentence combining.

Next, I will take you through some of the techniques of combining basic sentences to form transforms. These techniques include using:

a. modifiers of different types,

b. subordinate clauses,

c. conjunctions, and

d. sentence modifiers

In presenting, describing and discussing the basic sentences and the transforms, I will use mostly authentic sentences to illustrate and drive home important points about sentence combining. By authentic sentences I mean sentences taken from books, newspapers, journals, magazines, manuals and brochures. These example sentences, as I call them, will serve as models.

The example sentences will help you immensely in learning how to write well. First, they will raise your awareness of what gold-winning sentences are, what effective sentences are. ‘We cannot write effectively unless we have previously developed a sense of what is effective,’ says Gerald Levin in his book Short Essays. Second, the example sentences will provide you with something good to imitate because, as Ann Longknife and K.D. Sullivan point out in their book The Art of Styling Sentences, ‘you learn to write better sentences as you learn every other skill: by imitating the examples of those who have the skill’.

Important rounds on the sentence combining race are the practice exercises or activities. A major reason for providing these practice activities is that we learn by doing, and another reason is that good writing is the result of practice. Note that no amount of reading about writing will make you a good writer unless you also practise writing.

The activities in the book will help you to discover and to confirm important points about the sentence by yourself. They will test you to find out if you understand the theoretical issues presented to you. They will test you to find out if you have acquired the skill of sentence combining. Above all, the activities will help you practise, in a practical way, what you have learnt.

In greater detail, the activities will ask you, among other things, to:

•identify words and structures to raise your awareness of them,

•fill in gaps with your own words or constructions,

•construct sentences of your own to mirror the structures you have been taught,

•combine sentences using different techniques or strategies,

•correct errors in other people’s sentences so that you will be aware of such errors and avoid them in your writing.

I provide answer keys to some of the activities in the book for you to check your work, especially if you’re working on your own.

GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing is interactive. By this I mean that the book is informal and is like a conversation between you and me. I write as if you’re in front of me and I’m talking to you. Writing is an interaction. It is a collaborative activity between the writer and the reader. Because I don’t want to sound like a preacher or someone giving orders, I use an informal rather than a formal tone to explain and describe to you points and issues about writing gold-winning sentences. Next, I ask you questions in the form of activities and you take your conversational turn by carrying out the activities. It’s my turn again, and this time I tell you whether your answers are right or wrong by giving you the correct answers where this is possible. Where specific answers are not possible or desirable, I provide suggestions and guidelines.

Suggestions for using GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing

Here are some suggestions to help you get the most out of this book especially if you’re working on your own:

1. Read the book from Chapter One and don’t skip any chapter. Each chapter builds on what has gone before it. You may not understand a chapter if you haven’t mastered the techniques or details in the previous chapter or chapters.

2. Carry out the activities as you come to them. Don’t skip any of them, because there’s a good reason for each activity. Don’t look at the answers to the activities where they’re provided until you’ve carried out the activities .

3. Go back and reread a chapter if you cannot answer any of the review questions at the end of the chapter. All the answers to the review questions can be found inside the chapters, so I have not provided answers for them. The main reason for the review questions is to make sure that you have mastered all the important points made in the chapter.

4. Work through the book with someone or with a group of people if this is possible. You’ll encourage each other or one another, and this will improve your learning.

5. Practise what you’ve learnt from the book when you write.

6. Finally, remember that the more you practise writing, the better a writer you’ll become. ‘In learning how to write, there is no substitute for practical experience,’ says Rupert Morris in his book The Right Way to Write .

GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing is my way of sharing with you some of the things I’ve learnt about writing from teaching writing in tertiary institutions for many years and from writing fiction and non-fiction. I hope you’ll learn something from this book that will help to make you a better writer. There’s always room for improvement for all of us. Good luck!

Mantras for You

According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a mantra is ‘a word or phrase which is often repeated and which sometimes expresses a belief’. As you go through this book, I suggest that you repeat these two mantras to yourself:

Writing gold-winning sentences will help raise the quality of my writing.

First, try to understand and then practise, practise, practise!

Review Questions

1. What are the four features of gold-winning sentences?

2. Why are sentences important in writing?

3. What is a basic sentence?

4. Why is it important to have a sound knowledge of basic sentences?

5. What is a non-basic sentence or a transform?

6. What is sentence combining?

7. Name four of the different techniques of combining basic sentences?

Chapter Two

INTRODUCING WORD CLASSES

The basic element of communication is the word.

George Gibson

INTRODUCTION

The word is the basic element of communication and every word we use in building sentences belongs to a particular category or group. We call the different categories word classes or parts of speech. A word class is a collection of words that have particular characteristics in common.

Knowing what the word classes are and how to recognise them will help you as you learn to write gold-winning sentences. First, the knowledge will help you understand descriptions of the ways we put words together to build sentences. References to word classes are used in such descriptions, and you will not understand them if you don’t know what the word classes are, and if you can’t identify them.

Second, the knowledge will help you implement guidelines on how to improve your sentences. For example, you cannot implement the advice to make your sentences vivid by using concrete nouns if you don’t know what nouns are in the first place. Again, if someone reads over your written work and tells you that one of your sentences is incorrect because you’ve used an adjective instead of an adverb to modify a verb, you’ll not be able to correct this error if you cannot identify the adjective and the verb in question.

After studying this chapter you will be able to:

•state the two major groups of word classes,

•list the word classes that belong to each group,

•describe the major differences between the two groups,

•state the three criteria we use in classifying word classes.

The two major groups of word classes

The word classes are divided into two major groups. The first group is known as open-class words. They are called open class because we keep adding new words to them. The open-class words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Other names for this group, in case you come across them in your reading, are content or lexical words.

The second group is known as closed-class words, and belonging to this group are pronouns, prepositions, determiners, conjunctions and interjections. They are called closed class because new words are not added to the words belonging to this group. It is therefore possible to make a complete list of them. Other names for this group are grammatical or function words. Altogether there are nine word classes.

Criteria for classifying the major word classes

To be able to identify the major word classes, you need to know, in the first place, how they are classified. We use a combination of three criteria to assign words to open-class words. These criteria are:

the meaning of the word, that is, what the word refers to or expresses

the form or shape of the word

the position of the word in a sentence

(Note that the word criteria is the plural of criterion which means a standard by which we judge something.)

The three criteria of meaning (semantics), form (morphology) and position (syntax) will come up again and again in this book as ways of determining the differences between the grammatical units.

We will now look at each of these criteria in some detail.

The meaning of the word

We use the meaning of a word, that is, what the word expresses, or represents, or refers to, to assign it to a word class. Using the meaning criterion, for instance, we classify as a noun a word that names a person, place, thing, idea, quality, event or occasion. In the same vein, we classify words that express actions, states, processes, activities and occurrences as verbs, and words that describe people, things, places, events and occasions as adjectives.

The form or shape of the word

The second criterion we use to assign words to a particular word class is the form or the shape of the word. Form or shape here means the way in which the word is made up, that is the structure of the word. Just as a sentence is made up of words, a word is made up of small units of meaning that we call morphemes. For you to understand how we use this criterion to assign words to word classes, you need to know a little bit about morphemes. So what are morphemes?

Morphemes

Let us first look at examples of morphemes before we learn about their features. Some words in ES1 below consist of one morpheme, while some consist of two or more morphemes. The words consisting of more than one morpheme are in bold letters, and the ones consisting of only one morpheme are not in bold letters.

(The example sentences I use to illustrate the points I make in this book are numbered for easy reference and the letters ES before each number stand for the words example sentence or example sentences.)

ES1 One of the earliest memories I can summon from the realm of childhood was a homecoming that was extraordinary even for such recollections .

Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile

If we try to break any of the one-morpheme words into smaller units, we will come up with meaningless units. For example, if we break one into smaller units we come up with o and ne, or on and e. The word on is meaningful, but it has nothing to do with the word one.

Here is a breakup of the words that consist of two or more morphemes in the excerpt. The morphemes in each word are separated with plus signs.

We can learn a few things about morphemes from these examples. The first is that a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. Even the short morphemes -er, -es, -ion and -s each conveys a meaning. The second is that some words consist of one morpheme only, while other words consist of more than one morpheme. The third is that we cannot break a morpheme further into anything that is meaningful.

Activity 2.1

Identify each word in ES2 that consists of more than one morpheme and break the word into morphemes.

ES2 We walked quickly at first, and then slower, pausing every now and then to fasten gathers, tie shoelaces, scratch, and examine old scars.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Discussion on Activity 2.1

The following words in ES2 consist of more than one morpheme:

walked (walk + -ed)

pausing (pause + -ing)

scars (scar +-s)

quickly (quick + -ly)

fasten (fast +-en)

slower (slow + -er)

shoelaces (shoe +lace+s)

Note that following a spelling rule the e in the word pause is removed before the morpheme -ing is added to the word. Note, too, that the word gathers as used in this sentence is a type of garment. The s is not a plural morpheme but a part of the word, just as s is a part of the word news.

Types of morphemes

Morphemes are divided into two broad types. Those like walk, quick, slow, scar, pause and fast in ES4, which can stand alone as words in their own right, are known as free morphemes. Those like -s, -en, -ed, -ing, and -ily that are attached to scar, fast, walk, pause and quick, respectively, and which cannot stand alone and so must be attached to the free morphemes are known as affixes or bound morphemes.

Affixes can be categorised into prefixes and suffixes. Affixes that come in front of free morphemes like re- in rebuild are called prefixes. Those that appear after free morphemes like -ed added to walk to form walked and -s added to scar to form scars and -ly added to quick to form quickly in ES2 are known as suffixes. Most affixes in English are suffixes rather than prefixes.

Activity 2.2

Identify any prefix or suffix in each of the underlined words in ES3 and ES4.

ES3 Joseph didn’t know why his brothers mistreated him or why he was imprisoned unfairly but later he saw God’s hand in everything.

Bob and Debby Gass in The Word for Today, June 2008

ES4 The issue of corruption and mismanagement is at the heart of underdevelopment and poverty in the country and the constitution frowns against it.

Gani Fawehinmi in Daily Sun

Key to Activity 2.2

The suffix in brothers is -s and there is no prefix. In mistreated we have a prefix, mis- and a suffix, -ed, and treat in the middle is a free morpheme that can stand on its own right as a word. The word unfairly has a prefix un- and a suffix -ly, while fair is a free morpheme that can stand on its own right as a word. The suffix in corruption is -ion, and mismanagement is made up of a prefix mis-, a free morpheme manage, and a suffix -ment while underdevelopment is made up of a prefix under-, a free morpheme develop, and a suffix -ment. The suffix in frowns is -s.

Affixes are also divided into inflectional affixes and derivational affixes. Inflectional affixes are always suffixes and they do not change the word class of the word to which they are attached. We use