English Homework Help

Perspective 1Must you write complete sentences eachSTEPHENtime, every time? Perish the thought. If yourwork consists only of fragments and floatingINGclauses, the Grammar Police aren’t goingto come and take you away, Even WilliamTEURStrunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognizedthe delicious pliability of language. ‘It is anold observation,” he writes, “the best writerssometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.”Yet he goes on to add to this thought, whichI urge you to consider. “unless he is certainof doing well, [the writer] will probably doWriter Stephen King has his own views about how far webest to follow the rules.”should follow established rules of grammar.The telling clause here is unless he is certain of doing well, If you don’t have a rudimentarygrasp of how the parts of speech translate into coherent sentences, how can you becertain that you are doing well?Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of thesentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to thesubject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid thepassive tense. I’m not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in TheElements of Style.Messrs Strunk and White don’t speculate as to why so many writers are attracted topassive verbs, but I’m willing to … I think timid writers … feel the passive voice somehowlends their work authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty, If you find instructionmanuals and lawyers’ torts majestic, I guess it does.The timid fellow writes, ‘the meeting will be held at 7 o’clock’, because that somehow saysto him, ‘put it this way and people will believe you really know’. [Instead], throw back yourshoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write, ‘the meeting’s atseven’. There, by God! Don’t you feel better?Stephen King, On Writing a Memoir of the Craft