The MLA's Line by Line, How to Edit Your Own Writing

Cover......Page 1
Copyright page......Page 6
Contents......Page 9
Preface......Page 11
On Looking at Sentences......Page 17
1  Loose, Baggy Sentences......Page 25
Profile of a Wordy Sentence......Page 26
Weak Verbs......Page 27
Ponderous Nouns......Page 30
Strings of Prepositional Phrases......Page 32
Routine Condensing......Page 35
Choosing Bargain Words......Page 38
Leaving Unsaid......Page 40
2  Faulty Connections......Page 42
Putting Modifiers in Their Places......Page 43
Adjectives......Page 44
Adverbs......Page 46
Verbal Phrases......Page 53
Appositive and Contrasting Phrases......Page 57
Prepositional Phrases......Page 59
Clauses......Page 64
Jockeying for Position......Page 67
Subject-Verb Connections......Page 70
Ambiguous Words......Page 73
Placement of Objects......Page 75
3  Ill-matched Partners......Page 78
Unbalanced Pairs and Series......Page 79
Parallelism and Correlative Conjunctions......Page 82
Parallelism and Clarity......Page 85
Other Incompatibles......Page 93
Subject-Verb Disagreement......Page 99
Compound Subjects......Page 100
Subjects Subverted by Other Words......Page 103
What, All, and None as Subjects......Page 105
Other Tricky Subjects......Page 108
Alternative Subjects......Page 111
Pronoun-Antecedent Disagreement......Page 112
Shifts in Person......Page 113
Gender Problems......Page 114
Shifts in Number......Page 117
Other Disagreement Problems......Page 119
Missing Antecedents......Page 122
Obscure Antecedents......Page 126
Ambiguous Pronouns......Page 128
5  Problems with Punctuation......Page 132
Commas—Good, Bad, and Indifferent......Page 133
Between Adjacent Parallel Items......Page 134
Around Parenthetical Elements......Page 135
Nonrestrictive Modifiers......Page 136
Interrupters......Page 141
Introductory Modifiers......Page 143
In Sequences Where Needed to Prevent Misreading......Page 144
In Special Contexts......Page 145
Harmful Commas......Page 146
Discretionary Commas......Page 148
Around Transitional Adverbs and Similar Interpolations......Page 149
Between a Conjunction and an Introductory Modifier......Page 150
Before an Interrupting Modifier Following the Conjunction that......Page 152
Summary......Page 153
Semicolons......Page 155
Colons......Page 157
Dashes and Parentheses......Page 158
Afterword......Page 161
Appendix A: The Parts of a Sentence......Page 163
Subjects and Predicates......Page 164
Objects and Complements......Page 165
Word Groups as Sentence Elements......Page 168
Modifiers......Page 169
Types of Sentences......Page 170
Verbs......Page 171
Nouns......Page 173
Pronouns......Page 174
Adjectives and Adverbs......Page 176
Prepositions and Conjunctions......Page 179
Converts and Hybrids......Page 181
Appendix B: A Glossary of Questionable Usage......Page 185
Selected Bibliography......Page 231
A......Page 233
B......Page 234
C......Page 235
F......Page 236
I......Page 237
N......Page 238
P......Page 239
S......Page 241
V......Page 242
Y......Page 243