Comma Att*ACK!*

Really the only wonky grammar rules I remember being taught was the one where you are supposed to put a comma where ever you would naturally breathe. As I got into AP English class, I discovered that putting a comma in these places does not exactly work. I mean, if you, just, you know, put commas, wherever you want, to have someone, take a breath, you end up with, a sentence that looks, a lot like, this and reads like, an asthma attack.

Now I'm not saying that you should use a bajillion commas when you want to convey having an asthma attack. As a writer, it would be better just to indicate the character/narrator/speaker or whatever is having an attack. The reader can insert the gasping in themselves. Using the commas, in that sort of way can, be classified as, a gimmick, and editors and professors alike, hate, gimmicks *Cough! Gasp!*

Emotions

I had a student come into the writing center with a paper that recounted her experience of losing her fiancé. He had gotten in a tragic car accident that day they got engaged. It was very emotional. She provided details of his car accident that actually made me feel sick to my stomach. Scenes of blood and gore filled the pages of her essay. Organization was not an issue because she had clear transitions and followed a sequential time order which made it easy for me to follow her story. But seriously, why would someone want to share a story like that with a developmental English class? She had trouble with comma splices, fragments, and run-on sentences, but they were hard to get to because I felt in some respects that by helping her fix her paper I was, in a way, distorting her memory of the event. She wanted to do several stylistic sentences that would have been acceptable in a creative writing class but not in developmental English class. For example, she wanted to do one word sentences to emphasis a certain point. Words like “heartbroken” and “shock” acted as interjections. Also, several exclamation points were used to acknowledge the severity of her shock and heartbrokenness which is understandable.

In my head, I jumped ahead a few moves (like on a chessboard). I visualized myself trying to explain to her that in academic writing exclamation points are rarely if ever used. In my head, I imagined her countering by asking how to show the appropriate amount of sorrow if exclamation points were off limits. And this is where we delved into a hypothetically uncomfortable part of the session. I told her she might want to consider, for her next paper, a less personal subject. She whined and said the professor encouraged them to pick something to write about that they feel passionate about. I told her that that was absolutely true and that I could see where she was coming from, but feeling passionate about a certain event or occurrence in your life does not necessarily constitute a good paper topic. I could see we had gotten off track so I returned to the present moment where I was about to correct her exclamation point usage.

I suggested that she shy away from exclamation points in academic writing. She said, “Okay” and we moved on.       

I an uber sensitive person and I actually chocked up a few times while reading her paper, but I covered my emotions with a few well-placed coughs and grunts. I could not stop internalizing her experience. I kept picturing my husband in a terrible car crash. That would have been a totally appropriate response had this been a creative writing piece. But it wasn’t. I needed to do my best to keep myself alert and responsive to the paper so I could pick up on errors and help this girl learn grammatical concepts she obviously was not yet familiar with. Though I smiled and helped her to fix her comma-splices, run-ons, and fragments, inside I continued to question why she would want to write, for all to read and hear, about such a tragic personal experience. I wish I would have tutored this session after we discussed it in class be1cause I would have definitely brought of the free counseling services WSU offers to students.  

Weird Grammar Rules

Comma Momma

I have been trying to explain punctuation to my five-year-old because his inquisitive mind wants to know why his teacher will separate words by that weird dot that doesn’t really look like a dot. I’m glad he has an English major for a mom (though I doubt he is) because I can go into detail with him why certain punctuation marks are used. I’m glad he has me because when I was taught grammar, I was misinformed, and the weirdest grammar superstition I was taught involved comma usage. I was taught to do the thing where I breathe and the intonations in my voice indicate where I should use a comma. I thought, even back then in middle school, that that was a weird way of describing how someone should punctuate a sentence. Now I know it is complete and utter bull. I was curious after our class discussion how this concept worked so I looked it up on google. Luckily, the first thing that came up when I typed in comma usage was several places where I could go to learn the six rules. One of the best resources I found to explain comma usage was on grammarbook.com; however, it was a little complicated. I doubt many students would have sufficient amounts of curiosity to stay and review all the concepts the website provides. It provided an example for each rule (21 rules on this page), after giving an explanation of the rule, and even divided rule five into two subcategories to avoid confusion. Unfortunately, she dismisses dividing two independent clauses with “, and” (or any conjunction, rather) as a stylistic preference. I understand it to be a hard and fast rule, but I can see why she would argue what she argued.     

I then looked up a short history of commas and found some really interesting information on http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/maguirem/history.html. It explained the origin of the myth that commas should be placed where the writer pauses for breath. Because language began as an oral tradition, punctuation did not come to be a problem until writing, because of a lack of punctuation, did not have the same affect when it was read as it did when it was written or spoken. The website says even spaces between words were omitted. This confusion had to stop. But it was not until the printing press was invented that any sort of standard for punctuation became an issue. I liked how the website explained comma usage. It described how commas are the most commonly used and abused form of punctuation.

But conjunctions are often helpful…

The idea that conjunctions cannot begin a sentence is a horrible misconception. If conjunctions cannot begin sentences then there might be streams of independent clauses that would be conjoined in either an abrupt choppy fashion or convoluted ideas within the body of a text. But then again, the idea that coordinating conjunctions should not begin a sentence does have some validity because they do function to join words, phrases, and clauses. However, if long streams of monstrous amalgamations of grammatical patterns seem to have no end then an author’s writing will be confusing. For example, William Faulkner linked independent clause upon independent clause in his writing. There are many fans of Faulkner out there, but his writing could be used as an example of why lengthy sentence formation can cause confusion in readers.    

Weird Grammar

There are a just a few weird grammar rules I can think of that I fell victim to. I can honestly say that I wasn't taught a comma rule until my junior year of high school, so I operated by the comma where you put a breath idea for the majority of my education. Luckily for me I think I had good instincts when it came to putting in punctuation for my sentences, so  my teachers started to sort of gloss over my writing. I rarely had a teacher point out to me or explain my comma errors. I so wish someone would have told me the comma rules sooner! They are really not that hard, and my sentences would have been so much more solid if I had known how to punctuate them.

Another concept that was drilled into my head by multiple English teachers was that using "I" in a paper is never allowed. NEVER allowed. My teacher sophomore year was especially hardcore about enforcing this rule in her classroom. As a direct result of her incessant yelling about not using "I", I still struggle to use the pronoun in my academic writing. I often have to catch myself from not telling students to automatically take out every "I" in their paper, even when they use effective phrases such as "I will argue" or " I will discuss..." in a thesis statement. This teacher would mark down major points for saying anything along those lines, and an "I think" would just about send her into a fit.

I agree with Amanda's logic as to why these incorrect grammar rules are taught. The English language seems to have an exception to every rule.I think that teachers would rather give a blanket statement that will prevent the student from making the mistake in most situations than to take the time to explain each exception. I feel great empathy for students who are learning English as a second language, as I am sure that it is incredibly frustrating to learn that many basic grammar rules have exceptions. That being said, I try to tell ESL students when the error they have made is just a silly exception. I think it is important to identify that they have not made a mistake in their logic or else they might start to believe they don't understand the applicable grammar concept.

I feel fortunate to have only had a few strange grammar rules taught to me over the years, and I am even more grateful that teachers in my AP courses were able to set me straight and explain my mistakes to me.

First Tutoring Session

My first session was with a student whose native language is Spanish. She had an accent and I thought her writing might have grammatical errors because her speech contained a number of mistakes. That could have made me nervous except I can speak, write, and understand basic Spanish not to mention she had incredibly advanced grammatical skills in English. The paper itself had a minimal amount of syntactical errors not to mention her grammar functioned really well. A few sentences could have been changed to reflect more common word usage, but I liked her paper the way it was.

We were working directly from her computer screen which I did not mind as much as I thought I would, but I plan to not do this future. I see the value in the process of fixing mistakes on paper then transferring them onto the computer because several writing concepts that skilled writers are familiar with are reviewed and discussed during the tutoring session and need to be reviewed. This revision happens during the editing process and forces the students to familiarize themselves with the concepts that were discussed during the tutoring session.  

The organization of the paper was well formed so no worries there. I could read the whole essay without a lot of friction because her transitions were comfortable for me as the reader. The few corrections I made, with her help, to the paper mainly dealt with subtle language barriers which were easy to fix but difficult to explain why. I felt like my experience with Spanish helped me to understand and better explain concepts in a way for her to understand. I mainly relied on having her reread sentences that did not make a lot of sense to see if she could do it without me. The adjective order definitely came into play. I got a feel for how difficult it must be to write for a class where the other students were ahead by default just because they knew concepts such as adjective order (not even on a conscious level). Native English speakers have an advantage even if they were not themselves necessarily aware of their abilities. I did not feel especially smart or important as I helped her make her corrections. Instead, I felt humbled. I realized her English was so much further ahead, by leaps and bounds, than my Spanish. Native speakers take for granted what they know when it comes to writing in their native language. Speaking of writing in one’s native tongue, I told my family how we discussed verb conjugation in class and they got a kick out of the idea of deducting points because a student mis-conjugates a verb in their native tongue.

As a tutor, it is important to remember to slow down. The tutee might find it helpful if you go back and make an outline of what you as a reader derived from the paper. When I was tutoring, I just did a verbal outline making sure I understood every point the tutee wanted argued. She was happy with the overall outcome of the paper, and so was I.        

Wacky Grammar (Or Lack Thereof)

Truthfully, the wacky grammar rules I was taught are a little different, because overall I wasn't taught grammar in school. We briefly went over when to use periods and exclaimation points and the like, but no one ever really taught us grammar rules.

Teachers would correct our papers, but that is it. Most of the knowledge I've gained over the years has come from reading so many books. Through those books I started to learn about sentence structure, grammar, and more. The only difference was with commas; we did in fact learn the idea that every space for a breath should either be a comma or a period. This caused me to often overuse commas for a very long time, although lately I have been able to kick the habit.

I know it seems strange; perhaps it was because I went to a very small school, but I really did only learn grammar through my own devices. All of my teachers seemed to assume we had been taught it already, so they did not bother to teach us about it further. We went over organization, word choice, essays, literature, and yet we never truly covered grammar. Honestly its amazing to me that I understand grammar as well as I do, considering my schooling.

Wacky Grammar Rules

I can only remember a  few wacky grammar rules that I have been taught throughout my life, but when I started working at the Writing Center, I realized that I had definitely been taught things incorrectly. As choppy as this blog post may be, I can think of no other way to organize these wacky grammar rules than to type them as individual answers to this question.

In second grade, my teacher taught us that the reason that we say “Amanda and I” instead of “Me and Amanda” is because if someone says “Me and Amanda,” it could sound like “Mean Amanda”. I didn’t understand the difference between using “me” and “I” when talking about two people until high school. I would be lying if I said that I did not feel betrayed and disappointed by my second grade teacher once I was corrected.

In seventh grade, I was taught that a comma must always come before “because” and that a colon can be used before any list of items. I really wish that I could go back and ask my teachers about these rules and the reasoning behind them. In high school I did not understand why I was suddenly not allowed to put a comma in front of “because”, but I learned that I should not do that.  

In ninth grade, my English teacher taught that one must always place a comma after a year in a sentence. An example of this would be “I was born in Nevada in 1993, this makes me 19 years old.” Obviously this is incorrect because the comma depends on the sentence not the fact that a year is being used. That also screwed up my writing for a while.

I imagine that I would be able to come up with more if I thought about it long enough, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t help me very much. I may not be correct about this, but it seems that teachers may teach rules as absolutes because it is too difficult to teach the exceptions to every rule. My teacher may have made us say “Amanda and I” for every instance because that rule is easy to teach to second graders as “Mean Amanda”. I was probably taught that a colon can be used before any list of items because that is often what a colon is used for. My ninth grade English teacher may have taught that we must have a comma after a year because in many sentences students use phrases such as “In 1993, something happened.” Maybe the secret is that most teachers are actually quite lazy and do not feel the need to explain the reasoning behind each of these items. Teachers may also not know the grammar rules well enough to explain them to their students. Either way, I’m glad to be working at the Writing Center to have had these misconceptions cleared up.

Grammar Superstitions

So what kind of wacky grammar rules were you taught?

Encountering Emotional Writing

As an English undergrad with an emphasis in creative writing, I had several experiences with emotional writing. Some involved manufactured emotions, such as those derived from fiction, but I also took a poetry class and a creative non-fiction class in which people wrote pieces that were very brave in their openness and honesty. Among them were stories of encountering racism, dealing with spousal or child abuse, or losing loved ones to disease or old age.

Perhaps because there was a tacit understanding that these types of pieces would arise and were difficult to write, everyone in the class responded well. It seemed universally acknowledged that the students could express sympathy and encouragement, but still voice criticism and suggestions for improvement.

Due to those classes, I tend to react that way when someone hands me a paper, for a class, that has as its subject or content something that is obviously close to the author’s heart. I do my best to be sympathetic and understanding, but still help that person revise for a better paper. The result is that I tend to be more circumspect than I normally would if it were an argumentative essay, even adopting a gentler tone than usual, but I still don my editor’s cap because I know that’s why they handed me that paper.

While I have not encountered emotional writing in the Writing Center, I had a friend who wrote a very emotional piece for a class about the death of her father and her estrangement from her family. Later, she tried to publish it, and wanted my input. I noticed that there were several sections that strayed from the plot or cut down pacing, and others where the action wasn’t clear. Although I knew it was difficult for her to write, I told her what I thought and how she could improve it.

Were I to enter a tutoring session where the tutee had a paper like her’s, I would do the same thing. Honestly, I don’t see any other way of approaching it. It does them no good for me to try and spare their feelings by not pointed out areas that need revision and possibly condemn them to a poor grade. As long as the advice is given from a place of respect (as should all advice, regardless of content) I don’t see the tutee becoming angry or upset. It’s not like they don’t know that my job as a tutor is to say something about their papers.

If I came into the Writing Center with a paper about the time my pseudo-fiance dumped me (long story, but trust me, it’s emotional), but it was poorly written, I would be more upset that the tutor ignored those errors in an attempt to spare my feelings. As long as this hypothetical tutor wasn’t rude or dismissive, I would understand that he was commenting on my writing, not me as a person. I would hope that anyone I tutor would grant me that same benefit.

A Sad Experience

I have encountered only a few students who have come into the writing center with sensitive writing topics. The most memorable experience I have had so far with this topic was when a young lady in her late twenties came with a personal narrative. The young woman’s paper was about a very dramatic experience she had has a teenager. At the age of seventeen, this student lost her mother to an unstable man with a gun. The paper explained the events leading up to the mother’s murder and the proceedings that followed after. The personal narrative also included the young lady’s reactions to the situation after hearing the news and how to she deals with the pain of losing her mother today. During the session, the student would cry here and there as I read through the different events that took place during that horrible and sad day. I felt the need to stop in the middle of the paper and ask her if she wanted me to continue. The student didn’t see any need to stop, so I continued to read aloud. When I was finished, I looked at the student sitting next to me and told her how sorry I was for her loss. I cannot imagine going through such a hard, painful experience and keeping myself from falling apart. My mother and I are very close. She is the person I go to when I have a difficult problem and need comfort. Thinking about this very idea brings tears to my eyes. I honestly don’t know what I would do with myself if I lost her. Even with the passing of so many years, the pain of a lost love one can still linger and cause tears of sadness. I was impressed with how well this young lady held herself to together and the strength that she demonstrated.

After reading through her personal narrative, the student explained the situation in a little more detail. I sat there and listened; I asked questioned when I thought appropriate. I wanted to let the student know that I was there to offer the support I could and that this was a safe place to express herself. From the brief conversation we had, I learned that her mother had been pregnant and the unstable man that shot her was an ex-boyfriend. I apologized again her for hardship. During the time the student expressed her sadness of the situation and went into more detail on what occurred, there was the thought in the back of my mind that if the session was to take a turn for the worst I would be unsure of how to handle it. I remember being told to recommend outside sources, such as counseling services. Luckily nothing of the sort happened. The student and I went of the paper and fixed a few grammatical things, nothing to major. Her writing overall was pretty clear and got the point across. At the end of the session, I thanked the student for sharing her paper with me and apologized for her loss once more. I think the biggest thing this particular student needed was for someone to listen to what she had to say, so she could get whatever was weighting her down off and into the air. Sometimes people just need someone to listen to what they have to say and understand it. I believe, at least I like to think, I was able to help the student by doing this.