Capitalizing Words in Titles (= = Capitalize)

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From Flickr Creative Commons

From Flickr Creative Commons

In academic writing, ideas are constantly being exchanged.  Writers credit intellectual sources to show both the path and development of their ideas and to avoid plagiarism.  Academic writers also identify sources because sharing ideas and making connections between your ideas and the ideas of others is a means of entering the academic playground.  You must become fluent in crediting sources and showing clearly which ideas are yours and which ideas belong to others.

There are many factors involved in crediting sources.  One factor is properly capitalizing titles of essays and articles.

STRATEGY:

Most words should be capitalized in titles including:

  • The first and last words
  • Words of four letters or more
  • All words of titles of three words or fewer

Words that SHOULD NOT be capitalized in titles are:

  • Articles (a, an, the) that do not appear at the beginning or end of the title
  • Coordinating Conjunctions
  • Prepositions of 3 letters or fewer
  • “To” when part of a verb phrase that is not at the beginning of the title

“Why American Kids Should Be Happy but Aren’t”
“Who Said I Had to Be a Genius to Get Attention?”
“The Truth Behind Mohawks and Other Hairstyles”

VT = Verb Tense: Progressive Verbs

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Photo: Dave-R-on-Flickr (Creative Commons)

Photo: Dave-R-on-Flickr (Creative Commons)

STATEGY: All of the verbs below indicate continued action. Notice all of these verbal phrases include a conjugated “to be” verb.

  1. I’m going to buy my sister a new jacket.
  2. She is going to be happy.
  3. Her friends are going to be jealous.
  4. Rocco and his friends will be watching the playoffs for the next three weeks.
  5. They were watching the playoffs when the scandal broke.

In the first sentence (I’m going to buy my sister a new jacket), the purchase hasn’t happened yet but the intention, the goal to buy a jacket, has.  The second sentence shows present progressive for “she”.  The third sentence shows present progressive for “they.” As soon as the coat is purchased, the sentence will change to “I bought my sister a new jacket.” (Simple past)

The fourth sentence indicates an action that will continue into the future.  Rocco and his friends will keep watching the playoffs for three weeks.  After the play-offs are finished, “Rocco and his friends watched the playoffs for the next three weeks.

TYPICAL ERRORS: A common writing error is to omit the necessary “to be” before the “-ing” form of the verb.  An example of this mistake is: I going to buy my sister a new jacket.” Or, “Her friends going to be jealous.”

Another mistake is to incorrectly conjugate the “to be” of this tense.  An example of this mistake using the fourth sentence is: “Rocco and his friends be watching the play-offs for the next three weeks.” Or, “They be watching the playoffs when the scandal broke.”

 

Development and Structure: Beginning, Middle, and End

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aristotle public domain

Aristotle wrote the famous “Poetics.”

All successful writing has a sense of flow, or as many writing instructional texts (including the CATW rubric)  suggest, a “beginning, middle, and end.”  You already look for this when you watch a movie or watch a TV show.  You may not consciously sense this as you read, but if you are reading carefully, you would likely notice if the end was cut off of a novel or an essay.The Greek philosopher Aristotle (pictured above) mentioned this in his famous treatise on writing and criticism, Poetics: “Now a whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”How does this translate into writing an essay?  In tutoring, we discussed this as a sense of structure in writing.

  • Five or six paragraph essays have an introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph.
  • Each paragraph has( to some exten)t a topic sentence, support for that topic, and a concluding sentence.

There are many ways to structure each paragraph, but a sense of the role that each paragraph plays is important in presenting the reader with a profound sense of “beginning, middle, and end.”  Additionally, transitions create a sense of flow between the beginning, midde, and end.  These visible divisions on the page (paragraph divisions and the transitions within paragraphs), make your argument clear to your reader and frame your ideas.

Pages: Analysis and Development; Structure

SP = Spelling

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New_York_Lower_East_Side_Tenement_Museum’s_landmark_tenement_building_at_97_Orchard_Street

New_York_Lower_East_Side_Tenement_Museum’s_landmark_tenement_building_at_97_Orchard_Street Photo from Wikicommons.

While the abbreviation and the “fix” (look the word up or use “spellcheck”) seem obvious, if this is a comment you get often on your papers, consider reviewing available lists of commonly misspelled words and “homophones” and “homonyms,” words that sound alike but are spelled differently, such as “their,” “they’re,” and “there” or edition vs. addition.

VT = Verb Tense: Types of Verbs

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imgresThis first post on grammar deals with verbs, an aspect of English grammar that challenges many new students.  Recently, in tutoring sessions, we discussed “progressive” tenses, but before we even got this, we discussed the types of verbs:

  1. Action verbs
  2. Linking Verbs
  3. Auxilliary or “helping” verbs

Before verbs can be fully understood, writers must know that verbs must “agree” with the subject and also show “tense” or time.  A verb is a necessary component of a “clause.”

1.  An action verb is what many writers think of first when they think “verb”: to run, to jump, to laugh, to write, to conjugate, to abdicate, to obfuscate.  The list continues.
Example: Action verbs capture and demand the reader’s attention.

2.  A linking verb “links” a subject of the sentence with description. Common linking verbs are “to be” verbs, to seem,  to appear. This list is a sample of the most common.

Example: Linking verbs are useful.  Though they seem humble, they are necessary in the English language.

2.  Auxiliary or helping verbs are parts of verbal phrases (they work with other verbs) to form a clustered verb.  Common helping verbs are could, would, shall, should, and have.

Example: We could not express our ideas well without helping verbs.

Reading for Analysis: What and Why

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6543_kants_thinking_cap.jpg

The first task in the CATW and other college writing and reading assignments is learning how to read and ANALYZE  effectively.  So what does the word ANALYZE actually mean?

WHAT:
The Free Dictionary online defines “analyze” in this way:
ANALYZE: tr.v. an·a·lyzed, an·a·lyz·ing, an·a·lyz·es
To examine methodically by separating into parts and studying their interrelations.

WHY:
When reading for analysis, a text is broken into parts to better understand the whole.  In biology lab, you know that when you look at a cell for a first time through a microscope, you only see a cell as a “whole.”  With a trained eye, you begin to see the individual parts of the cell and to understand how those parts work together.  If you like to cook, you first taste food as a “whole,” but as you understand different ingredients, you begin to taste and see evidence of certain parts of a recipe and to understand how ingredients create reactions that work together.

Reading for analysis is also the process of seeing the parts of a whole text and understanding how those parts use reaction of the reader to create a whole. With a more trained and experienced eye, you will begin to see how writers approach the same writing tasks you now must do as a college writer and reader.  You will understand what a writer is proving and to diagnose how other writers are setting up their ideas (for example, by using introductory and concluding sections and transitions) so that you, the reader, understand not just a thesis or idea but the argument that supports that thesis.

HOW:
There are many reading strategies!
Among those discussed in tutoring sessions are:

  1.  As you read, look for a writer’s thesis (main point of the overall essay).
  2. Notice how she or he uses the introductory and concluding sections of a text to set up the thesis.
  3. Notice how he or she sets up supporting points to support that thesis and transitions in between these points.
  4. Annotate: Underlining won’t help you when rereading.  Note what you think are important points in the margins.  Note your personal reactions and associations you may have with the text.

Words Have Lives: First Post

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This blog will have (eventually) pages offering explication of and strategies for the following categories of concerns for first year college writing:

  1. Analysis and Argument
  2. Paragraph Development
  3. Structure and Transitions (Essay and Paragraph)
  4. Language Fluidity
  5. Grammar and Mechanics
  6. MLA Format
  7. The Secret Lives of Words

Comments or suggestions welcome:
wordshavelives@gmail.com