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Academic and Thesis Writing Workshops
Series 1 2011
Seminar 3: the logic of written texts
[Slide 1] Today we get right down to basics. There is no substitute for good oldfashioned traditional grammar when you want to convey meaning. I place perhaps
more emphasis on grammar and punctuation than other writing teachers might. I have
yet to be convinced that you can adopt an anything-goes approach if you want to be
taken seriously at the elite end not just of writing but of intellectual endeavour
generally. I take the view that these things may be difficult but they are also supremely
worthwhile, as many difficult things are. Also, how difficult are they really? Not very,
if you look closely. If you want to be an excellent communicator and intellectual in
your field, then difficult things should be a challenge rather than a deterrent.
[Slide 2] Grammar and punctuation, as I am often reminded, are not everything. But
they are the foundations of all writing so that makes them something. They provide the
logical structure for of our written work, a structure that is anchored deep inside human
communication at its most basic level. I believe that applying the underlying rules of
English helps us to achieve the most elevated aims we set for ourselves because we are
optimising the tools of communication. In academic writing we are trying to do no less
than reshape peoples’ understanding of the world, even if it is a tiny corner of the world
represented by our very specific projects within our particular fields. Our writing does
matter and it should be as correct as we can make it, not just to ease the minds of any
pedants who read it but to ensure that it can raise up the ideas and the truths we are
trying to convey. In fact this goes for all kinds of writing, so we are thinking broadly in
this session.
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[Slide 3] The words of the American poet Robert Frost are our guide in today’s labours:
“Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your
grammar and your punctuation. Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy,
you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your
delight is in that power.” You can delight in your power to shape meaning with your
writing. To do that, let’s think about the tools you will need. At the end of today’s
session we will do some class exercises.
[Slide 4] Language is a clever, intricate machine that can run smoothly and get you
where you want to go without breaking down. Or it can splutter and cough and sound
wonky and get you nowhere. Most people who use cars have no idea what goes on
under the bonnet. But if you want to run your car at its best and develop it into a
performance vehicle, you have to understand its mechanics. It's the same with writing.
[Slide 5] To be a reader you don't necessarily need to understand the technicalities of
grammar and usage. To be a writer - to be a good writer anyway - you have a
responsibility to know your way around the intricacies of the language so that you use it
as a precision instrument. [Slide 6] This will give the sort of control over one’s
language use that inevitably results not just in correctness but grace and economy and
power as well.
Various approaches to the study of grammar are possible. I am taking the most useful
(in my opinion), traditional grammar. [Slide 7] Traditional grammar had its beginnings
in the ancient languages that preceded English, Greek and Latin. It is just as relevant
today, when you still need to know what a dangling participle is, or to identify whether
or not the subject and verb of your sentence agree or to understand which preposition to
select.
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[Slide 8] Grammar, since its beginnings in Ancient Greek when the word simply meant
“a written mark”, has come to mean the description of the relationship words have to
one another in a sentence. Sentences are essentially single units of thought as well as
being the most important and largest element of traditional grammar. Each sentence,
properly formulated, should convey a thought – usually a single thought. One of the
biggest problems I notice when I am editing research students’ manuscripts is sentence
structure. Quite often what is on the page is both structurally wrong and needlessly
convoluted. People often try to make their sentences do too much. As a result, they
become difficult for the reader to follow. If the sentences are both overly long and
ungrammatical, the reader has no hope. I suggest that you apply the logic of grammar
to your own work so that you can start to make your sentences more efficient conveyors
of information. For example, being able to identify the grammatical subject of a
sentence and ensuring that part of the sentence is prominent and contains key words
will make your sentences much easier to follow and satisfying to read.
I will not linger very long on the technicalities of grammar and in fact I have pared
them back so far that I am concerned that I won’t be giving you enough. But I am
conscious of the fact that we need to get to the practical uses of grammar quickly
without dwelling on the theoretical concepts. Please bear with me while we just get
some technical terms into play.
[Slide 9] Traditional grammar identifies eight parts of speech: noun, adjective, verb,
adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction and interjection [like hmmm, oh]; together
with their equivalents: adjectival phrase, adverbial clause, etc. Each of these parts has
a conceptually different role to play, even if some individual words can move between
roles. There is some flow between the content words – essentially some nouns can
become verbs and vice versa, adjectives can morph into adverbs, nouns are used as
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adjectives and so on. Even when the words cross over to new roles, they must still
behave in the accepted ways for nouns, verbs and so on to behave.
[Slide 10] Traditional grammar also specifies two “numbers”: singular and plural; five
“cases”: of which the most important for our purposes are subject (nominative), object
(accusative) and possessive (genitive); three “persons”: first, second and third; [slide
11] two “voices”: active and passive; and either four or five “moods” (depending on
how you define them): indicative (or declarative), subjunctive (or optative),
imperative, interrogative and infinitive. In academic writing the most useful mood is
the indicative or declarative sentence – the sentence that sets out factual information, so
that will be the main focus.
[Slide 12] English verbs have 15 “tenses”. The large number of available verbal tenses
is important in ensuring that nuanced action can be reported in sentences. It is enough
for our purposes today to understand the basics of past, present and future. Also,
traditional grammar has four “units”: word, phrase, clause, sentence.
[Slide 13] All the cases relate to nouns and their relative position in a sentence. When
a noun is in the nominative case it is the subject of the sentence. This is also known as
the grammatical topic of the sentence. Knowing this is helpful in constructing
informative sentences, because placing the grammatical subject at the start of a
sentence ensures the most efficient delivery system for written information in English.
Sentences exist to show the interrelationship of nouns, what those nouns do and what
happens to those nouns. Highlighting the dominant noun in the sentence by placing it
first helps in this process. [Slide 14] This is one of the reasons why your sentences
should begin with strong key words and not strings of dead words. If you rejig a
sentence to place the subject up front, sometimes you can eliminate half the
comprehension problems in an instant.
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[Slide 15] Nouns have an associate that can carry some of their workload - pronouns.
These are words such as “I”, “we”, “it”, “him”, “her”, “their”, “this” and many others.
They are useful for making the language flow more smoothly. When you use a
pronoun, the noun to which it refers is known as its antecedent. [Slide 16] Problems
arise when pronouns float around without an obvious antecedent, which is why –
particularly in academic writing – it may be unwise to use them to start a sentence. A
floating pronoun can cause real problems for the reader, who may either have to do
extra work to figure out the pronoun antecedent, or may make an incorrect judgement
on the antecedent. Consider this example:
The rise in the dollar has been marked by reduced exports in the cattle industry.
This has worried some economists.
Does this say that the rise in the dollar or the reduced exports have worried economists?
As writer or editor, you must not hand important decisions like this over to the possibly
distracted reader.
[Slide 17] Another example:
Visiting dignitaries watched yesterday as ground was broken for the new highenergy physics laboratory. This is the first visible evidence of the university’s
plans for modernisation and expansion.
“This” has no antecedent. There is no single word/noun in the previous sentence to
which this refers. However, the writer probably wanted to write “this ceremony”.
[Slide 18] Continuing now with the parts of speech we come to the verb. Whereas the
concept of “case” relates to nouns, the concept of “tense” relates to verbs. It is through
the verb, specifically through a particular kind called a finite verb, that you know
whether the action is taking place in the past, present or future. Sentences can only be
animated by finite verbs. No English sentence, at least in four of the five moods, can
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properly exist without at least one noun and one verb, in direct relationship to each
other.
[Slide 19] Simple finite verbs may be in the past, present or future tense. For example,
consider:
 wrote [past]
 writes [present]
 will write [future]
[Slide 20] Verbs take different forms depending on their function in the sentence and
the subtleties of meaning they are supposed to convey. That is why there are so many
tenses, including some less familiar ones:
 he had written (past perfect)
 he is writing (present continuous)
 he will be writing (future continuous)
[Slide 21] One of the most common self-editing tasks you will face will be making the
tenses of a piece of writing consistent. Changing tenses randomly through a piece of
writing is annoying for the reader and may be outright confusing. Sometimes tenses
can change several times within one sentence. This is where you must be strict and
have a firm of idea of what the dominant tense in the piece of writing should be. Some
academic theses are all in the past tense, some are in the present and some dabble in the
future tense (for example, this thesis will examine, will analyse, will find). As a
general rule, keeping to either the past or the present, and being consistent, is a good
plan. Steer clear of the future tense.
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[Slide 22] The classical declarative sentence construction in English is the “subjectverb-object” sentence, often shortened to SVO. An example might be: “Annette writes
the paper.” In this form, the verb connects the topic of sentence, Annette, to the thing
being acted upon, the object, also known as the predicate, or the comment, or (in
classical terms) the “accusative case”. In this sentence, the object is “the paper”.
[Slide 23] The SVO sentence is the essential information delivery system in English.
The logical simplicity of the SVO sentence assists both writers and editors.
Understanding the dynamics of this sentence structure will help you simplify prose and
give it greater explanatory power.
[Slide 24] The basic SVO construction provides a simple sentence that fulfils the
requirements of sentences in English, to convey meaning via a linear progression. Most
sentences in reality are more complex than this, and I will deal with complex and
compound sentences in a moment, but they still have this underlying structure.
[Slide 25] To be correct, sentences have to be powered by the right verb. In the SVO
formulation, only what is known as a “finite verb” is correct. In our SVO example, the
finite verb is “writes”. It is recognisable by the fact that it can be changed to indicate
past, present or future tense: wrote, writes, will write. [Slide 26] A common error is
attempting to use the word “being” as the driving force of the sentence. This
construction, clearly a sentence that follows and refers back to earlier information, is
wrong [please do not consider the truth or otherwise of the content – just consider the
grammar]:
This being the ideal environment for coral.
[Slide 27] This is not a complete sentence because the verb is wrong. The verb that has
been used here is “being”, which will not be able to create an SVO sentence. This
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string of words does not have a finite verb to power it and it can only be grammatical if
it is part of a bigger sentence:
The seawater around the reef is pristine, this being the ideal environment for coral.
The operating verb in this construction is now the word “is”, a suitable finite verb. In
this case you could quite comfortably say “was” for past tense or even “will be” for
future tense and the sentence will still hold. You cannot do this with the word “being”.
[Slide 28] Another way to fix this sentence would be to change the verb to something
suitable. This may lead to a new – though still less than ideal – sentence such as:
This is the ideal environment for coral.
[Slide 29] Even better, considering the need to emphasise the grammatical subject, to
avoid a floating pronoun and to perhaps provide the extra information that the longer
sentence offers, would be:
Coral grows best in pristine seawater.
More complicated sentences
[Slide 30] While the simple SVO construction is useful and often very powerful, there
are other ways to construct sentences, including using a grammatically more
complicated structure that has more than one clause. A clause is a group of words
containing a subject and verb that forms part of a sentence; it is joined with another
clause or clauses to form the complete sentence. Without getting too technical, these
kinds of sentences are known either as complex sentences (a main clause and attached
sub-ordinate clause/s) or compound sentences (containing clauses of equal grammatical
status). I generally recommend limiting your sentences to no more than two or
three clauses. If you find your sentence has six clauses, you really will have to
restructure it.
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[Slide 31] Here is an example of a complex sentence containing a main clause and a
subordinate clause. Note that subordinate clauses are joined to the main clause either
by a conjunction or, in certain cases, by a semi-colon [again, disregard the meaning of
the sentence and concentrate on the grammar]:
“The Prime Minister has announced a sweeping review of the 1992 Broadcasting
Act, though it was unlikely to reform the sector.”
Here the conjunction is the word “though”. There are many other kinds of
conjunctions. [Slide 32] The most common, which often though not always joins
clauses of equal status (co-ordinating clauses) is “and”, followed by “but” and “or”.
Consider this sentence:
“The Prime Minister has announced a sweeping review of the 1992
Broadcasting Act and the Communications Minister has established an
enquiry into the commercial radio sector.”
In this case both clauses can stand alone grammatically, once you remove the “and”.
This can’t happen with the subordinate clause, earlier, where the second clause was
dependent on the first.
Subject-verb agreement
[Slide 33] The subject of a sentence must “agree” with the finite verb of the sentence; if
the subject is singular then the verb must be singular too. If it is plural, then the verb
must be plural. This means that we write:
The lawyer discusses her strategy.
…and not:
The lawyer discuss her strategy.
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Most people with a reasonable grasp of English will have no problem understanding SV
agreement here. But what happens when the sentence is a little less clear-cut?
Consider these sentences [slide 34]:
The bittersweet flavour of youth – its trials, its joys, its adventures, its challenges
– are not soon forgotten.
OR
The bittersweet flavour of youth – its trials, its joys, its adventures, its challenges
– is not soon forgotten.
The correct sentence here has to be the second example, even if it doesn’t immediately
seem right. Words that intervene between subject and verb do not affect the number
(i.e. singular or plural) of the verb. When analysing your own sentences, you will need
to be sure that you have correctly identified the grammatical subject. One of our
exercises later will deal with this.
Dangling participles, also known as dangling modifiers
[Slide 35] Phases often appear at the start of a sentence, and this is where they can go
wrong, compromising the meaning you are trying to convey. The problem is known as
a dangling or hanging participle or modifier. It is probably best to give some examples
to illustrate:
 Watching from the sideline, our team thrilled us with an exciting win.
 Covered with grease, the water did not seem unduly cold to the swimmer.
 On entering the house, the atmosphere always seems to welcome the visitor.
Hopefully you can see what is wrong here. The participial phrase always attaches to
the first available noun or pronoun, and can end up in nonsense if that attachment is
incorrect.
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Active and passive voice
[Slide 36] In English, unlike various other languages, word order is crucial. It is not
okay to say “Annette the paper writes”. But there is another way to convey the
message in a different word order. “Annette writes the paper” is in active voice,
because it follows the SVO construction. But you can also say “The paper is written by
Annette”, and suddenly what was the object now starts the sentence instead of
appearing at the end, thus making this part of the sentence more prominent. It has
swapped positions and the subject (Annette) is now called the agent – “by Annette”.
Note also that the verb has undergone a change. You must add in a new word, in this
case “is”, to preserve the original meaning. The original verb also changes, from writes
to written.
You will often hear people saying you should not use passive voice, and some are quite
dogmatic about it. One reason for this is because this voice always guarantees a more
wordy sentence: passive voice verbs are always at least two words. [Slide 37] But you
can’t always avoid passive voice. It may be necessary, for example, if the active
subject is unknown or not easily stated. This might lead to a sentence like “Walter’s
father was killed in the Second World War”, which is in the passive form and where we
don’t know who or what actually killed Walter’s father. In this case, there can be no
“agent” because we don’t have enough information to be able to say who carried out
the action of the sentence.
[Slide 38] Sometimes, even when the “agent” is known, it is not stated. This is because
it is common for passive voice to be used to distance the writer from the reader and
from responsibility for the action in the sentence, to lend the appearance of objectivity.
This is why academic journal articles, government papers and other official documents
are filled with sentences in the passive voice. Consider for example the passive voice
sentence:
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“The hospital beds have been shut down.”
Again, there is no agent in this sentence, which has the effect of holding no-one
responsible for the action. It may well be that the sentence could correctly be rendered
as [slide 39]:
“The hospital beds have been shut down by the Health Department.”
…in which case it could be rewritten in active voice as:
“The Health Department shut down the hospital beds.”
I suggest being sparing with the passive voice, because it can remove responsibility for
actions as well as being difficult or confusing to read. You can't always eliminate it but
you can minimise it, or at least have a healthy combination of active and passive in the
final piece of writing.
[Slide 40] You can usually tell if a sentence is in the passive voice if, firstly, it has a
compound verb like “was written” and also if the word “by” is used to indicate the
passive agent. Note, however, that in those sentences where the subject is not known
(like “Walter’s father was killed in the Second World War”) or where the agent is being
concealed (“The hospital beds have been shut down.”), there is no agent indicated and
therefore no use of the word “by”.
Passive voice comes in several varieties, and so far I have just mentioned the most
common. I want to draw your attention to a particular variety that should always be
edited out when you find it. The distorted passive occurs when the true verb – the word
that actually indicates the action of the sentence – is hidden in a form of noun. [Slide
41]
1. Acid-etching removed the rust.
Active voice - acceptable
2. The rust was removed by acid etching.
Passive voice- acceptable
3. Removal of the rust was facilitated by acid-etching.
DP - unacceptable
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The problem with sentence 3 is that the real verb that shows the action (remove) is lost
in a weak noun (removal), and so another verb must be supplied to activate the
sentence. The various suggestions for filling in this gap are invariably the same tired,
weak verbs: in this example, facilitated, but you can also imagine achieved,
accomplished, carried out, performed, undertaken, effected. None of these actually tell
the reader what precisely was done. Only the precise verb, to remove, tells the reader
what happened. “Removal was carried out” sounds pompous, and it is inevitably more
wordy.
Rewriting Distorted Passive [Slide 42]:
 Check for a weak verb such as facilitated, undertaken etc.
 Find the hidden verb earlier in the sentence (in the sentence above it was
“remove” from the noun removal).
 Use this hidden verb as a direct verb in the sentence.
I would now like to turn to two important aspects of punctuation, specifically
apostrophes and commas. That is all we will have time for, although I will place some
additional information on to the thesis writing materials site on eGRS covering other
punctuation elements such as semi-colons, colons and inverted commas.
The rules for the use of apostrophes are simple and straightforward. [Slide 43]
Apostrophes are used:
To indicate contraction: “It’s [It is] a pity that people don’t [do not] care about
apostrophes.”
To show possession (in nouns, not pronouns): “The editor’s lament” for singular;
“The editors’ lament” for plural.
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The most common pair of errors is to leave out an apostrophe where it is needed but put
one in where it isn’t. [Slide 44] For example, the famous greengrocers’ apostrophe
leads to this kind of thing:
Apple’s, pear’s, avocado’s
[Slide 45] The iron rule, easy to remember, is that simple plurals never need an
apostrophe. You need to look at a word and see whether it is a contraction or a
possessive and then apply the apostrophe accordingly. If the word is neither of these
things, do not use an apostrophe.
[Slide 46] Also common is leaving out apostrophes when they are clearly needed, such
as:
The childrens playground
The babies bibs
The cats whiskers
They must be edited to the correct versions:
The children’s playground
The baby’s bibs/The babies’ bibs
The cat’s whiskers/The cats’ whiskers
Note that in their original, unpunctuated, form it is not always possible to determine
whether what is being referred to is singular or plural. Correctly applied apostrophes
will tell you.
[Slide 47] Modern Australian style dictates that you do not use an apostrophe in, for
example, the 1970s or to show the plural of acronyms such as QCs or MPs. Here, just a
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lower case “s” is sufficient and I think this is a good thing – it keeps it simple and
elegant.
[Slide 48] Possessive pronouns such as its, his, hers, ours, theirs, yours have a different
rule to nouns. These words never have an apostrophe. They exist as words only to
show possession, and no further symbol is needed for this function. Consider for
example “The cat chased its tail” in which the possessive pronoun “its” does not
require an apostrophe. When you see the word “its” always ask yourself if it is a
contraction, in which case it must have an apostrophe, or whether it is simply
possessive, in which case there is no apostrophe.
Commas [Slide 49]
There is perhaps more reason for confusion over commas than there is over
apostrophes. The rules for apostrophes are clear-cut, but the rules for commas are not.
Commas are used to separate ideas in a sentence and to otherwise make meaning clear.
They are intended to provide natural pauses within a sentence, to regulate the rhythm of
the sentence in ways that assist meaning. I have always found good comma use quite
helpful for spoken scripts because they assist the person delivering the speech or paper
to follow the sense of the prose in the heat of the moment, while speaking to an
audience or into a recording device.
[Slide 50] The trend in standard Australian English is to cut down on the use of
commas where possible. That’s fine to a certain extent, but you must keep in mind that
commas can change the meaning of a sentence:
The politicians, who liked to talk, were appointed to the committee.
The politicians who liked to talk were appointed to the committee.
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Here are some rules that may help comma use [slide 51]:
1. To avoid ambiguity:
“When the father finished washing, the children went to the beach.” Without a comma
here, ambiguity may arise over joining “washing” and “the children” together.
2. Between adjectives before a noun [slide 52]:
A large, black van.
Note that the use of commas here is only when the adjectives modify the noun
separately. If the modifying adjectives are working more closely together, such as “The
grand old duke of York”, a comma is not required.
3. In a list to separate the elements [slide 53]:
The basic stages of writing an article are: outlining, researching, drafting, checking and
confirming facts, redrafting and editing.
4. To distinguish parenthetical words and phrases [slide 54]:
My view, therefore, is that editors should always be consistent.
[Slide 55] Pay special attention to the point about parenthetical words and phrases.
Commas must always be used in pairs in this case. You cannot open such a phrase with
a comma and not close it. In the sentence “My view, therefore, is that editors should
always be consistent”, to not place the second comma after the word “therefore” would
be grammatically incorrect. [Slide 56] An easy way to determine if you need a pair of
commas is to see if the word or phrase could be taken out without damaging the
grammatical integrity of the sentence. If it can be taken out, then you must use two
commas around it.
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[Slide 57] No stray comma between subject and verb
I would like to make a strong declaration of where you don’t use a comma, even though
it is a common error. You must not let a comma stand between a grammatical subject
and its verb. I will come to a complicating factor in this in a moment, but let me show
you the general principle first:
“A grammatical subject links strongly to its verb.”
Do not write:
“A grammatical subject, links strongly to its verb.”
[Slide 58] The complication comes in when you are inserting a descriptive phrase:
“The woman, who was increasingly impatient, waited in line.”
You will see that the grammatical subject, “the woman” does have a comma after it,
and it takes a while to get to the verb, “waited”. The key point here is that the commas
enclose a parenthetical phrase that could be taken out, commas and all, without
disrupting the grammar of the sentence.
Before we do some quick exercises, I will conclude with the words of the great English
writer George Orwell [slide 59]: “To write or even speak English is not a science
but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a
struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness,
against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the
encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases
and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
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[Slide 60] Group exercises:
Please identify the grammatical subject in the following sentences:
Rose hurries to class.
He and I will operate the gear
The man devouring the grapes hasn’t paid for them.
[Slide 61] Identify the finite verb in each sentence and indicate whether it is in the
past, present or future tense.
Grammar shows the relationship between words.
The car stalled momentarily.
The company will consider this matter next week.
I run flat out.
[Slide 62] Indicate whether the following sentences are in active or passive voice, then
suggest how to rewrite them in the opposite voice:
The wine impresses our friends.
We are driven mad by the loud music.
Three people were chased by a man with a stick in a city park last night.
[Slide 63] Correct the punctuation in these sentences:
If what she say’s is true, then its time to rethink our priority’s.
Todays physics, was unknown even in the 1980’s.
The dog chased it’s owners car.
I have two book’s. The books covers are red.
[Slide 64] Turn the following distorted passive into clear passive voice or active voice.
Measurement of the resistance was carried out by the ohmmeter.
Daily measurement of the leaf area was undertaken.
Destruction of the seaside area was effected by the strong gales.
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