Lecture: Editing: Grammar, Mechanics & Common Errors
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 14
Opening
Think of a job applicant reading a cover letter three times before sending it to a hiring manager. Think of a lab technician proofreading a safety notice before it goes up on the wall. Think of a volunteer sending out a neighborhood newsletter. Each of them can lose a reader's trust over one small error, and the same few checks catch most of those errors. That's this lecture.
Here's where we are. In Week 1 you placed proofreading as the last pass inside editing. In Week 3 you met two comma moves and the seven coordinating conjunctions. In Week 13 you revised the running draft as a whole and then tightened its sentences. In this lecture we go one level closer, to the errors at the edges of sentences and the small marks that cost a reader's trust. Next week, in Week 15, you'll look back at everything you've written and show what you learned to do.
I'll use one tool for most of this lecture, so let me name it now: count the clauses, then check the joint. Let's start with why your own eyes fail you.
1. Proofreading on purpose
You've probably sent a message, read it again a minute later, and spotted a typo you'd read right past three times. That isn't carelessness. When you reread your own writing, your brain reads what you meant, not what you typed.
So proofreading has to be a skill, not a glance. The proofreading moves are the three habits that turn proofreading into a skill: reading the draft aloud, making the draft unfamiliar so you stop reading from memory, and hunting one error type at a time. Read aloud, and your ear trips over the missing word your eye skipped. Make it unfamiliar by changing the font, printing it, or reading from the last sentence up. Then hunt one error type per pass: boundaries, then agreement, then apostrophes, then commas.
Pause and try this. Your spell-checker shows no red lines. Is the draft edited?
Think about what a spell-checker can and can't hear.
Here's the answer. Not yet. Spell-check reads one word at a time, so it can't hear a comma splice or tell "its" from "it's".
2. Finding the clauses
Picture a train. The engine can run down the track by itself. A passenger car can carry people, but it goes nowhere until it's hooked to an engine.
Sentences work the same way. An independent clause is a word group with a subject and a verb that can stand alone as a sentence, such as "The library closes at ten." A dependent clause is a word group with a subject and a verb that cannot stand alone, because it opens with a word such as "because", "although", "when", or "which"; it has to lean on an independent clause. Put "Because" in front of "The library closes at ten," and the engine turns into a passenger car.
That gives us the clause test: count the independent clauses in a sentence, then look at what joins them. Zero independent clauses is a fragment. Two joined by a comma alone is a comma splice. Two joined by nothing is a fused sentence.
Pause and try this. "When the tutor met with the writer" has a subject and a verb. Can it stand alone?
Look at the very first word.
Here's the answer. No. "When" makes it a dependent clause, so it needs an independent clause to lean on.
3. The fragment
Imagine a notice on a door that reads, "Because of the storm." You wait for the news, and it never arrives.
A fragment is a word group punctuated as a sentence that has no independent clause, most often a dependent clause cut off from the sentence it belongs to; its length is not the test. Take "Because the library closes at ten." It has a subject and a verb, but "Because" leaves it with 0 independent clauses. The cure is to hook it to an engine: "Because the library closes at ten, the study group meets in the dining hall."
Here's the part that surprises people. "Although the neighborhood committee spent three long meetings arguing about the new bus schedule and the fare change" is 18 words, and it's still a fragment. "Riders complained" is 2 words, and it's a complete sentence. Count engines, not words.
Pause and try this. Which is the fragment: the 18-word committee line, or "Riders complained"?
Count the independent clauses in each one.
Here's the answer. The 18-word line. "Although" leaves it with no independent clause, while "Riders complained" has one.
4. The comma splice and the fused sentence
Think about two people on walkie-talkies. Each one says "over" when they finish. Forget the "over," and two voices pile on top of each other.
A comma splice is two independent clauses joined by a comma alone, with no coordinating conjunction after the comma. Here's one written for this course: "The bus was late, the meeting started without us." Both halves could stand alone, and a comma by itself can't hold them apart. A fused sentence is two independent clauses run together with no punctuation and no joining word between them; it's also called a run-on. "I read the essay aloud I caught two run-ons" has nothing at all between "aloud" and "I".
Now take a long sentence from Strunk's Rule 13, "Omit needless words." Here it is. "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." It's 30 words, but "a paragraph no unnecessary sentences" borrows its verb from the first clause. So it has 1 independent clause, and it's correct.
Pause and try this. Is Strunk's 30-word sentence a run-on?
Count the clauses that could stand alone.
Here's the answer. No. It has 1 independent clause, and a run-on needs two with nothing between them.
5. The five valid fixes
You can connect two train cars with a hook, a chain, or a coupling. Each one works; each suits a different load. Sentence joints are the same.
The five valid fixes are the course's five repairs for a comma splice or a fused sentence: a period, a semicolon, a comma plus a coordinating conjunction, subordinating one clause, or a dash or colon where it fits. Watch them on the bus sentence. A period: "The bus was late. The meeting started without us." A semicolon: "The bus was late; the meeting started without us." A comma plus "so": "The bus was late, so the meeting started without us." Subordination: "Because the bus was late, the meeting started without us." And a dash between the two clauses. That's 5 repairs of 1 error.
One caution. "So" and "because" claim that the late bus caused the early start. Use them only when that's true. And adding a second comma isn't a fix at all. The splice is still there.
Pause and try this. You don't know why the meeting started early. Which fixes are the honest choices?
Think about which fixes add a claim of cause.
Here's the answer. The period, the semicolon, or the dash. "So" and "because" would claim a cause you can't support.
6. Finding the real subject
Nobody says, "The box of crayons are on the table." In a short sentence, your ear gets agreement right. In a longer one, a phrase in the middle can fool it.
Subject–verb agreement is the match between a verb and its real subject in number, so a singular subject takes a singular verb even when a plural noun sits between them. Take "The list of sources are on the last page." Cover "of sources" with your finger. What's left is "The list are," and the list is one thing. So it becomes "The list of sources is on the last page."
Pause and try this. In "The list of volunteers are posted on the community board," what's the real subject?
Cover the phrase that starts with "of".
Here's the answer. "List." One list "is" posted, so the verb changes to "is".
7. Pointing every pronoun at one thing
Imagine a friend telling you, "My sister called my mom, and she was upset." Who was upset? You have to ask.
An antecedent is the word a pronoun stands for. Pronoun reference is the link between a pronoun and its antecedent, which should point to one clear word so the reader never has to guess who or what is meant. Take "When the tutor met with the writer, she suggested a new thesis." "She" could be either person. The fix names the person: "When the tutor met with the writer, the tutor suggested a new thesis."
One more rule. Singular they is the use of "they" for one person, which the MLA Handbook, 9th ed., accepts both for a person who uses "they" and when a person's gender is unknown or beside the point. So "Every neighbor should bring their own water" is accepted.
Pause and try this. A classmate marks "their" in "Every neighbor should bring their own water" as an error. Are they right?
Think about what the MLA Handbook accepts.
Here's the answer. No. It's singular "they", which the MLA accepts; rephrasing to "Neighbors" is a choice, not a correction.
8. Placing the apostrophe
Picture a café sign that reads "Todays special's." You'll still order the soup, but you noticed.
An apostrophe does two jobs. A possessive is the form of a noun that shows ownership or belonging, as in "the essay's thesis". A contraction is two words shortened into one, with an apostrophe marking the missing letters, as in "it's" for "it is". And a possessive pronoun, such as "its", "hers", or "theirs", shows ownership on its own and never takes an apostrophe.
Here's the test for the trickiest pair. Read every "it's" as "it is." In "The essays thesis is in it's last sentence," you'd get "in it is last sentence," which breaks. So it's "its." And "essays" needs the apostrophe it's missing: "The essay's thesis is in its last sentence." That's 2 apostrophe errors in one short sentence.
Pause and try this. "Each street has it's own crew leader." Does "it's" pass the "it is" test?
Say the sentence with "it is" in place of "it's".
Here's the answer. No. "It is own crew leader" breaks, so the sentence needs the possessive "its".
9. Putting each comma to work
A hiking trail with markers everywhere is as confusing as a trail with none. A comma is a marker, and every comma needs a job.
This week, a comma has three jobs. It follows an introductory element: "After the class finished its peer review, the draft doubled in length." It comes before a coordinating conjunction that joins two independent clauses: "The claim is clear, but the evidence is thin." That corrected sentence is a compound sentence, a sentence made of two or more independent clauses joined correctly. And commas set off a nonessential aside, a part of a sentence you could lift out without changing who or what the sentence means. In a cover letter: "My current supervisor, who trained me on the scheduling software, has agreed to serve as a reference." Lift the aside out, and you still know which supervisor.
A semicolon joins two closely related independent clauses on its own. And not every "and" needs a comma. In "The claim is clear and specific," the "and" joins two words, not two clauses.
Pause and try this. Does "The claim is clear and specific" need a comma before "and"?
Ask what the "and" is joining.
Here's the answer. No. It joins two words, and a comma comes before "and" only when it joins two independent clauses.
10. One error type at a time
A mechanic doesn't stare at the whole engine at once. Oil, then brakes, then tires.
Here's a newsletter notice written for this course, with 7 word groups punctuated as sentences. It says the cleanup starts at nine. Then: gloves are in the shed, comma, the city will supply bags. The list of volunteers "are" posted. Each street has "it's" own crew leader. "Because the park closes at dusk," period. Volunteers should finish by five. And every neighbor should bring their own water, run straight into "the forecast calls for heat."
The boundary pass finds a comma splice, a fragment, and a fused sentence: 3 errors. The agreement pass finds "The list of volunteers are": 1 error, and it confirms that "their" is singular they. The apostrophe pass finds "it's own": 1 more. That's 5 errors, and 2 word groups were fine as written. Joining the fragment to the next sentence leaves 6 sentences.
Then the running draft's revised paragraph gets the same passes, and it passes. It has 4 sentences and 0 boundary errors, and it already uses 2 of the 5 fixes: a colon in the third sentence and a dash in the fourth.
Pause and try this. Why hunt boundaries, agreement, and apostrophes in separate passes instead of one careful read?
Think about where attention goes when it looks for everything.
Here's the answer. One question per pass keeps your attention on one thing, and attention spread across everything finds nothing.
11. Checking the machine
Chatbots are fluent, and fluency feels like correctness. So test every grammar fix with two questions: does the clause test still pass, and does the sentence still mean what you meant?
Here are three changes, described in words. Asked to fix Strunk's sentence, a chatbot calls it a run-on and splits it into 3 sentences. But it had 1 independent clause, so nothing needed fixing. Given "I read the essay aloud I caught two run-ons," it adds a comma after "aloud." That moves a comma without fixing the boundary: the fused sentence becomes a comma splice. And given the running draft's last sentence, it swaps the dash for a comma, which creates a splice. Given the tutor sentence, it makes the writer the one who suggested the thesis, which changes the meaning.
Pause and try this. The chatbot's tutor sentence is grammatical. Why reject it anyway?
Ask who made the suggestion in the corrected form.
Here's the answer. It changed the meaning. In the corrected form the tutor made the suggestion, and a fix must keep your meaning.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Proofread with three moves: read aloud, make it unfamiliar, and hunt one error type at a time. Find the clauses, then check the joint. A fragment has no independent clause, at any length. A comma splice joins two with a comma alone; a fused sentence joins them with nothing. Repair either with one of the five fixes, and choose one whose meaning is true. Match the verb to its real subject. Point every pronoun at one clear word, and remember that singular they is accepted. Test every "it's" by reading it as "it is." Give every comma a job. And test every chatbot fix with the clause count and your own meaning.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week, in Week 15, Reflection & the Writing Portfolio, you'll gather your writing from this course and show, with evidence, what you learned to do.
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