Adjective Clauses, Part 1: What the Hell is an Adjective Clause, Anyway?

January 29, 2019

As writers, we’re often called upon to describe people, places, and things. I’ve written before about noun phrase appositives, which are handy little structures, but they aren’t the only tool for the job.  If you’ve got a passing familiarity with the parts of speech in English — thanks to the education you received in your formative … More Adjective Clauses, Part 1: What the Hell is an Adjective Clause, Anyway?

Bust Through Writer’s Block Like a Boss With This One Simple Activity

January 17, 2019

The hardest part of writing is the writing part. I’m not kidding. Getting started? Sometimes it feels impossible. And when you do start, sometimes you hit a wall. If you’ve had this happen to you — if you this happens to you a lot — you’re not alone. As Anne Lamott writes in “Shitty First … More Bust Through Writer’s Block Like a Boss With This One Simple Activity

Sentence Combining with Subordinating Conjunctions

December 12, 2018

Some writers don’t join their ideas. Each idea ends up in its own sentence. The writer doesn’t use coordinators. The writer doesn’t use subordinators. The writer doesn’t make transitions. This makes the sentences seem “choppy.” The connections between ideas are sometimes unclear to the reader. In this post, I’m going to focus on subordinating conjunctions, … More Sentence Combining with Subordinating Conjunctions

Sentence Combining With FANBOYS

March 4, 2017

When a writer fails to join sentences, it’s a twofold problem: the writing is choppy, making it less pleasant to read, and the connections between ideas are invisible to the reader, making it hard to construct meaning from the text. This kind of problem isn’t uncommon in student writing, but luckily, it’s a problem that can be solved using a variety of sentence combining tools.

In this post, I’m going to focus on the FANBOYS. … More Sentence Combining With FANBOYS