6. Verb Tense
• Tense means time. Verbs tell us what action is occurring, and when it is occurring. Verbs change
form to indicate when an action takes place. Your writing should remain in one tense, switching
only when necessary to the meaning. To fix tenses, read your draft looking only for tense
agreement.
7. Plural & Possessive
• An “s” is put at the end of a word for two reasons: to make it plural or to show possession.
• When you add an “s” to make a plural, don’t use an apostrophe:
Plurals: books, students Possessives: the book’s pages; the student’s desk
Possessives for plural nouns: the books’ pages; all of the students’ desks
• When you add an “s” to make a plural, don’t use an apostrophe.
Possessive pronouns don’t use apostrophes: yours, hers, its, ours, theirs.
8. Capitalization
• Remember to capitalize proper names, the personal pronoun “I”, names of cities, states,
countries, and important words in titles such as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
• Titles that should be underlined (or italicized) include: books, long poems, plays, magazines,
movies, published speeches, TV programs, ships, works of art, long musical works, CDs.
• Titles that should be in “quotation marks” are short stories, songs, short poems, articles in
magazines or newspapers, essays, episodes of a TV program, chapter titles in books.
9. Word Usage = A word used incorrectly. Sentence Usage = a sentence constructed awkwardly.
• Frequently confused words:
It’s = it is Its = possessive of it To = toward, as far as
Too = also, extremely Two = 2 Your = possessive of you
You’re = you + are Their = possessive of they They’re = they + are
There = in that place
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