Style Academy #5

I decided to do my style academy assignment on the semicolon because it’s something that I have never fully understood. The rules that come along with the semicolon are as follows. When you have two independent clauses you can use a semicolon to separate them but still keep them in the same sentence. The second rule is that you use to semicolon to separate to causes that are linked with a transitional element. The third is similar to the second, it’s joining two independent clauses that are linked with a transitional phrase. The fourth is a little different. You use a semicolon to separate two elements of a sentence.

            To be honest I had no idea about any of these rules before I watched the video and I realize now that I make way too many mistakes with semicolons in my writing. A good example of a wrong sentence being corrected it:

-               The dog went down to the market, the man went to find his dog.

-               The dog went down to the market; the man went to find his dog.

            I’m still not comfortable using semicolons but I now understand when they are supposed to be used and I can practice in the future.

Style Academy #4

I chose to focus my style academy lesson on the difference between active and passive sentences. I continue to struggle with this concept in my writing because I personally like the sound of passive sentences more than active sentences. My personal writing style is using passive sentences in a more articulate way in order to get a point across. Yes, I know it may be more wordy and annoying, but to me it sounds better. 

But this is an assignment, and we are getting graded on it, so I might as well attempt to change some of my passive sentences to active sentences. 

Original Sentence: "Other students will be able to be found by our users using the search tab." 

New Sentence: "Users will be able to search for other students using the ‘search’ tab."

Overall I have learned that active sentences give a paper a more direct, simple tone. In the future I hope to write in a more active tone so that my readers will be able to understand better and get more out of my papers. 

 

            The style academy lesson that I decided to focus on was active sentences. After meeting with Sister Spooner I realized that I have way too many passive sentences in my paper. I have been frustrated lately with my papers but I haven’t been able to figure out why, but after watching this video I have realized what I’ve been doing wrong.

            This is a sentence from my paper that I have changed into a more active sentence. “By the lack of action and interest taken by the United States Government it is apparent that the Mormon church is in no way going against the already established laws in the United States.” The original sentence was “It is really easy to see by the lack of action and interest that the United States Government has taken during this whole process that the Mormon church is not going against the laws that have been established in the United States.” The biggest problem that I found was the start of the sentence. It was drawing the attention away from the topic of the sentence.

            When I write I have a bad tendency to think “longer is better.” Passive sentences are usually longer so I use those a lot more often than active sentences. But after watching the video I found that active sentences are so much better. They do a much better job at getting the point across compared to passive sentences.