Guide to spelling, punctuation and grammar

16
GRAMMAR AND ACCURACY
Writing essays in a structured and clear way so that
your reader/assessor can follow what you are
trying to say is a very important factor in the
assessment grade you achieve. Another important
factor is the accuracy of what you write. By
accuracy, we mean not only the clarity of the
expression but the correctness of usage in terms of
grammar, punctuation and spelling. If you make too many grammatical,
punctuation and spelling errors in your writing, this will create the
wrong impression and lose you marks so that your grade assessment will
be affected.
Anyone, and that includes the author of this book and your teachers and
assessors, can make grammatical, punctuation or spelling errors,
especially when writing at speed, such as in an examination. The trick is
to minimise these. The occasional error can be overlooked, but a
multitude of them cannot. Examiners are usually told to penalise
candidates whose writing is error-prone. That is true for coursework
assignments as well as examinations. Indeed, as spell-checks and
grammar checks are readily available on computers now, there is even
less excuse to present flawed work for coursework. 
In this section, we will look at some crucial areas where accuracy will
pay dividends.
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WRITING IN SENTENCES
Consider the following. 
1. I am.
2. Because the voters turned against the party.
3. Making the reasons for the war very clear indeed.
4. Judges must be independent of government so that they can make
decisions free of political influence.
5. Although efforts were made to patch up the quarrel.
6. The country declared war on the day after the invasion.
Three of the above are complete sentences and three are not. Sentences
one, four and six are complete sentences because they make sense on
their own.
Examples two, three and five are incomplete sentences because they
clearly do not make sense standing on their own. 
Example two could be an answer in speech to a question, but it would
not be appropriate to use an incomplete sentence like this in an essay.
Example three, similarly, could be a comment as a response to
something that has been said.
Example four lacks a main statement and is only a clause, not a complete
sentence.
You must be able to write in complete sentences in formal essays. If you
have any doubt about a sentence you have written, read it over ‘in your
head’ and judge from the sense whether it is complete or not.
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H
OW TO WRITE ESSAYS

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