Mr. McMahand

English Composition

Essay Corrections: Grammar, Style, Mechanics, Citation

The following assignment should help you to focus your attention on some of the most recurrent and significant errors that you are making in your essays. Apply the directions and rules listed below to complete the task.

First, type out the sentence with the error(s). Below is a sample sentence, marked passive, which needs reworking. Next, using your St. Martin’s index, look up passive voice, locate the precise rule in the book, and copy it out. Finally, rewrite or revise the sentence, transforming it into the prescribed active voice.

Below is an example, including the “bad” sentence, the copied out rule, and the revision:

If, as Foucault suggests in “Panopticism,” morality is brought about through an internalization of the social “seeing machine,” then practically all systems of thought and belief appear as social constructions or as propped up truths.

Passive voice: 45 b: “In general […], try to use the active voice whenever possible. Because the passive voice diverts attention from the performer of an action and because it is usually wordier than the active voice, using it excessively makes for dull and difficult reading.”

Revised sentence: If, as Foucault suggests in “Panopticism,” morality mirrors an internalization of the social “seeing machine,” then practically all systems of thought and belief appear as social constructions or as propped up truths.

YOU MUST FIND AT LEAST five different KINDS of errors and a TOTAL OF TEN ERRORS; if you have multiple errors occurring in the same sentence, you may correct them all and count them as a part of the ten. Or, you may move on to another sentence, as long as you tally ten errors. If I marked fewer than ten mistakes, then correct the maximum number of mistakes marked.