Self-Assessment

I’ve always loved to write. As a small child, I would try and imitate my mother as she wrote a grocery list or a note. When I got older, I would write stories about the things I imagined or the world I saw around me. My teachers always encouraged my writing, but never did much in the way of fixing my punctuation and grammar. I cannot remember ever diagramming a sentence or learning grammatical terms like ‘preposition’. To this day, I don’t think I could tell you what a preposition is.

The eighth grade is the first time I can remember really getting any sort of solid grammar and punctuation instruction. Our English teacher, Mrs. Preble, had us write autobiographies as our first writing assignment, and used those pieces as a diagnostic tool to decide if the class needed a lot or a little when it came to grammatical instruction. My class apparently needed a lot. It was in Mrs. Preble’s class where I learned almost all of what I know about punctuation. She was the one who taught me what an appositive is (one of the few terms I know).

When I began Running Start, I noticed a trend in the grading of my English 101 papers: comma splices. My instructor would scribble all over my paper about comma splices, without ever telling me what they were or how to fix it. By the end of that class, I was almost too afraid to even use a comma, fearing that a gratuitous use would result in red ink.

So what does all of this introductory jibber mean? Well, dear friend, it means that there have been a lot of holes in my grammatical instruction. Through a lot of reading as a child and Mrs. Preble’s instruction, I have a fairly good grasp on where my punctuation is supposed to go. However, the rest of my syntax may possibly be lacking. I don’t know, because I’ve never been told. My rule of thumb for comma placement was always “put a comma where you pause”. When I’m thinking, I pause a lot. When I’m listening to myself talk in my head as I write, I pause a lot. I’m no longer sure if the “pause” is a good rule to follow with comma placement.

I have zero idea on what to actually do with a semi-colon. I use them sparingly and with extreme caution. I avoid semi-colons the way some people avoid black cats or speeding cars while in the crosswalk.

One of my worst habits is speaking in passive voice. While my words have become more active (unlike me), I still find myself falling into the passive trap, almost in an effort to sound “more academic”. I have a tendency to fall into one of two camps: colloquial or passive. Where is this coveted middle ground? How can I find the promised land?

Overall, I would really love to great a better grasp on punctuation and grammar. My current grasp has been good enough to avoid major red ink on my papers, but I feel that it could be much better than it is. Commas are wonderful, but what about a dash? A semi-colon? A colon? I feel like I’m missing out on this great, wide world of wonderfulness because I’m too afraid to take a chance and be wrong. I want to be able to play with my sentence structure and create new things and find new ways of expressing myself through semantics.

Oh, and I want to be able to annoy my friends even more than I already do by correcting their punctuation, spelling, and grammar.