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sweeter when everyone sings.” Cultural diversity in an atmosphere that encourages free expression
makes living in Austin a unique experience.

You may have noticed our example paragraph was indented. All paragraphs in the English language
should use this format. You may want to remind students to keep a running checklist of format issues,
common punctuation, and capitalization errors to avoid as they write and revise.

• Use appropriate ending punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark).
• Use commas in a series, greetings, and closures (Dear President Bush,).
• Use correct internal punctuation, including commas, colons, semicolons, and hyphens.
• Use apostrophes correctly in contractions (can’t, won’t, haven’t, it’s, etc.) and in singular
and plural possessives (Mom’s purse; the kittens’ toy).
• Use quotation marks with the names of articles and essays, and to attribute quotes
within a given context.
• Capitalize proper nouns such as names, days of the week, titles, months, institutions,
holidays, magazines, newspapers, organizations, and the pronoun I.
• Check spelling for commonly misspelled contractions, compounds, and homonyms
(capital, capitol). Use rules (i before e . . . ) to review paragraphs during and after writing.

Review:

• Every sentence contains a subject (what or whom the sentence is about) and a
predicate that conveys information about the subject.
• Simple sentences have only one verb and contain only one main idea.
• Complex sentences have two or more verbs, consist of two or more clauses, and
contain more than one main idea.
• Compound-complex sentences consist of more than one main clause and at least one
subordinate clause.
• Fragments lack a verb, a subject, or both, or may be a dependent clause which is not
connected to an independent clause.
• Run-on sentences result when two independent clauses are joined without a
conjunction or without punctuation.
• A comma splice results when two independent clauses are mistakenly connected with a
comma instead of being separated into two sentences or joined with a conjunction or a
semicolon.
• A verbal is a noun or adjective formed from a verb and includes participles, gerunds,
and infinitives.
• Effective paragraphs begin with a topic sentence that is followed by supporting
sentences that lead to a conclusion or closing statement.
• Students must review sentence structure, verb tense, pronoun/noun agreement,
punctuation, capitalization, and spelling during the entirety of the writing process to confirm
proper grammar and usage.

Building Blocks of Language III

Lesson Objective

In the upcoming section, we’ll review some components of language and refresh your memory about
the fundamentals required to help students successfully develop their own use of the language.