Antigone Skills and Explanations

1. Antigone Skills and Explanations Day 1 Punctuating titles Put quotations marks around the titles of essays, short stories, poems, one-act plays, songs, newspaper articles and magazine articles. Underline or italicize the titles of book-length works, book-length poems, full-length plays, album or CD titles, titles of movies and names of newspapers and magazines. Use of a Colon before a List One use of a colon is to introduce a list. Make sure not to use a colon directly after a preposition or a verb. If you wish to use a colon add the words the following after the verb or preposition.

2. Day 2 Commonly Misused Words: Doubt with But When one uses the word doubt, do not follow it with the word but. A Lot A lot is written as two words rather than as one. Wordy Sentence Since writing is meant to communicate, sentences should do so in a clear way. Adding unnecessary words can confuse the audience. Thus, eliminate all words that do not add new meaning.

3. Day 3 Apostrophe with Joint Possession When two or more nouns own the same thing, one uses an apostrophe after the final noun. Leon and Rodolphe's car would mean that they both own the same car. When two or more nouns own different things, one uses apostrophes after each noun. Leon's and Rodolphe's cars would mean that they both own different cars. Choppy Sentences In order to make it more pleasant to read, sentence variety--variations in length and sentence type--adds ease of reading and interest to a piece of writing. A series of short, simple sentences should be combined to add variety and make writing more concise. Use of Ellipsis If you leave words out of a quotation, use an ellipsis mark to indicate the omitted words. If this occurs at the end of the sentence, add a period, creating four periods. Remember that this punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.

4. Day 4 Adding -ed to Words Ending in -y When adding -ed to words ending in -y, change the -y to -i and add -ed. Exclamation Point The exclamation point is used after an interjection or at the end of a sentence showing strong emotion. Interjection An interjection is a word that expresses emotion. It is either set off from sentences by commas or made a sentence by itself followed by an exclamation point.

5. Day 5 Spelling Out Time When the abbreviation A.M. or P.M. does not follow a time, spell out the time. The execution is at 2 o'clock. Incorrect The execution is at two o'clock. Correct Subordinate Clause A subordinate clause--sometimes called a dependent clause--will begin with a subordinate conjunction or a relative pronoun and will contain both a subject and a verb. This combination of words will not form a complete sentence. It will instead make a reader want additional information to finish the thought. If it comes at the beginning of the sentence, put a comma after it. If it comes at the end of a sentence, do not put a comma before it.

6. Double-negatives: Hardly and Scarcely Scarcely and hardly are already negative adverbs. To add another negative term is redundant, because in English only one negative is ever used at a time. They found scarcely any animals on the island. (not scarcely no...) Hardly anyone came to the party. (not hardly no one...)