Serious grammatical errors in your essays will result in a low score in the area of grammar and mechanics.  Even though I am most interested in your ability to articulate and defend interesting ideas, it is important that you do so in a manner that shows you understand the mechanics of the English language. Because the following errors suggest you don't quite understand basic English grammar, their occurrence in your writing will keep your essay from receiving a grade of C or better. I'll refer to these errors as x-rated because an essay that contains one or more of these will earn an "X' grade. The following is an introduction to X-rated errors. Over the course of this semester, we will learn more about each of these errors and strategies for eliminating them from your writing.

Sentence Fragment: A sentence fragment is a group of words that is punctuated as a sentence but lacks either a subject or a predicate. In the examples below, sentence fragments are italicized:

Example: She is very thin and rarely eats more than a salad in the cafeteria. Which suggests to me that she has an eating disorder.

This is a common sort of sentence fragment. You can avoid this mistake by going on a "witch hunt" and revising all declarative sentences that start with which.

Example: The dog that ate my homework and ruined my life.

This is a fragment because it lacks a predicate. The subject does not perform an action. Yes, there are verbs in the sentence, but these verbs are words that help to identify the dog who is the subject of the sentence; however, they do not tell what action the dog performed.

Subject-Verb Error/Verb form Error:

Example:  Everyone we know are taking the class for credit.

Everyone, like most indefinite pronouns, is a singular noun and takes the singular form of the verb. Other indefinite pronoun's are someone, nobody, each, anyone, etc.)

Fused Sentence/Run-On Sentence:

 Sentences of this sort are created when two or more groups of words that could each be written as an independent clauses are presented without any punctuation marking the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.

Example: My grandmother then moved my father to Florida he was in for a few rough years.

Example: I thought I understood the reasons I lost my job imagine my surprise when I found out that the decision had been completely arbitrary.

Comma Splice: A comma splice is created when two independent clauses are joined by a comma.

Example: The dog that ate my homework and ruined my life was sent to live with my aunt, however, the cat that ate my sweater and destroyed the flower garden still lives at our house.

Example: Rosemary loves to read Shakespeare and Milton, I prefer Dickens and Joyce.