Getting Down to Business: Grammatical Issues to Focus on

I’m trying not to sound cocky, but I really don’t think that I need to focus on any particular grammatical and mechanical issues as a writer this semester. Of course, one can always improve his or her writing, I just don’t think that I have one very specific area that needs work.

However, from writing this blog, particularly my first post, I realize that I use some rather long sentences with a lot of commas. For the most part, I think that my writing is technically still grammatically correct, but it might be better if I figured out a way to shorten things up or employ a different sentence structure. For example, my previous blog post included this sentence:

     “You had to cram it in your mouth slowly, and you tried to hold it in there without

     swallowing, but then you realized that there was no possible way to spit it out, so you

     proceeded to gulp it down as quickly as possible.”

In this sentence, I used three conjunctions and many commas. Is it grammatically correct? I think so, but I really don’t know. It could be shortened a bit or maybe broken up. This issue is something that I can definitely work on this semester.

Like I said before, I really can’t think of many grammatical or mechanical issues that I need to improve. Oh, Microsoft Word Spellcheck says that I use the passive voice a lot. Of course, how accurate is Word’s Spellcheck? It annoys me because it says that “alright” is a word, something that I fail to believe. Maybe I just don’t like people informally saying “alright” compared with the more acceptable “all right.” Anyways, back to the passive voice. It is so hard to try to stop using it in English when they are teaching us how to use it in my Spanish class! Grrr. Here are some generic examples of the passive voice:

  

     “Mistakes were made.”

     “I was hit by the ball.”

While the second example seems fairly clear that it is in the passive voice, the first one can be harder to decipher. Obviously, by writing examples specifically meant to be in the passive voice, I have no problem telling that it is in the passive voice! It is when I am writing an essay or other academic writing that I have trouble deciphering if it is the passive voice or not. Funny…when I used Spellcheck on the two example sentences, it said that they are “0% Passive Sentences.” Hmmm…

I’m sure that there are way more ways that I can improve my writing, other than what I just mentioned here, and I am excited to see how this class will help me and what the semester holds!