College Composition

College Composition Study Guide Used as an adverb: • Maria felt sick if she sat in the backseat of a car . Used as an adjective: • The store opened on Monday when it was scheduled to open . Used a noun: • David fed his dog whatever the dog wanted .

Avoid incomplete sentences: Writers need to avoid punctuating a dependent clause as if the clause is a complete sentence. Dependent clauses without an independent clause are called sentence fragments. • Although the phrase “storm of the century” is overused. Hurricane Ruth may turn out to earn that name. Changing the period to a comma changes the fragment to a complete sentence. • Although the phrase “storm of the century” is overused, Hurricane Ruth may turn out to earn that name. Dangling constructions: Dependent clauses can function as an adjective or adverb. As is true with phrases, if the word the dependent clause modifies is positioned far away or is missing, the clause can be described as dangling. • When it is hot, Ed drives his car with the convertible top removed. What is hot in this sentence? The convertible top? The car? In this case, it is best to rewrite the sentence with the missing word included. • When the weather is hot, Ed drives his car with the convertible top removed. Agreement between clauses: Both types of clauses contain a subject and predicate. The nouns and verbs in clauses within one sentence must agree. Agreement issues can be caused by the tense of the verbs, or the number or person of the nouns and pronouns. In sentences where there is not agreement between clauses, the meaning of the sentence can be ambiguous. These sentences should be revised to clarify their meaning. Ambiguous tense: The verb tense in both clauses must agree. • When Morgan started his shift, he attends a meeting to hear today’s priorities. Started is past tense and attends is present tense. • When Morgan starts his shift, he attends a meeting to hear today’s priorities. Ambiguous pronoun: The noun to which the pronoun refers to should be clear. • The manager told Morgan his assignment because he wanted to start work immediately.

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