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2nd Meeting Basic Writing - Writing Mechanics

The document discusses writing mechanics including capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. It provides rules for capitalizing words like proper nouns, titles, the beginning of sentences. Punctuation marks covered include periods, commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, parentheses, apostrophes, and quotation marks. Spelling concepts explained are sounds and letters, vowels and consonants, digraphs, diphthongs, and homophones.

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estu kanira
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47 views18 pages

2nd Meeting Basic Writing - Writing Mechanics

The document discusses writing mechanics including capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. It provides rules for capitalizing words like proper nouns, titles, the beginning of sentences. Punctuation marks covered include periods, commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, parentheses, apostrophes, and quotation marks. Spelling concepts explained are sounds and letters, vowels and consonants, digraphs, diphthongs, and homophones.

Uploaded by

estu kanira
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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WRITING MECHANICS

(CAPITALIZATION, PUNCTUATION, AND


SPELLING)
1. CAPITALIZATION
The general rules of capitalization
1. Capitalize the beginning word in a sentence
2. Capitalize pronoun I
 If I see her, I will give her your message.
3. Capitalize the proper nouns
 Names of people: George Washington, Jane Austen, Soekarno
 Geographical divisions: the Far East, DKI Jakarta, South Africa
 Geographical features: Mount Everest, the Rocky Mountains
 Bodies of water: the Mississippi River, the Pacific Ocean
 Names of islands: Bali Island, Trinidad, Komodo Island
 Names of deities: God, Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, Zeus, Minerva
 Names of sacred books: Qur’an, the Bible
 Names of documents: the Magna Charta, the Declaration of
Independence
 Names of streets, avenue, highways and parks: Oxford Street, Fifth
Avenue, Cikampek Highways, Menteng Park
 Names of Nationalities: Indonesian, African, Australian, Chinese,
Filipino
 Names of wars, historical periods and events, famous monuments and
buildings: the World War II, Gaza War, Bandung Lautan Api, the
Middle Ages, the Twentieth Century, the Taj Mahal, the White House
 Names of days, months and holidays: Monday, Sundays, January,
March, Valentine’s Day
4. Capitalize the major words in titles of books, poems, articles, magazine,
movie, and art work
• Book: Let’s Write English
• Poem: Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”
• Article: Using Clustering Technique towards Student’s Writing
Skills
• Magazine: Reader’s Digest
• Movie: The Lord of the Rings
• Art Work: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
5. Capitalize titles when they are used before names: Governor Anies
Baswedan, Lieutenant General Soeharto, Mr. Santana, King David,
Dr. Smith, President Lincoln
6. Capitalize relatives' family names (kinship names) when they
immediately precede a personal name, or when they are used alone in
place of a personal name.
 We found out that Mom is here.
You look good, Grandma.
Cindy and Ruby loved Uncle Josh's house.
7. Capitalize the proper adjectives derived from proper nouns: Asian,
French, a Russian song,
8. Capitalize Interjection: Ouch! Oh! Wow! No!
9. Capitalize the abbreviations for proper nouns: U.S.A., G.B., B.B.C., U.N.
10. Capitalize the first word of direct quotations
 She yelled , ”Help me!”
 My sister asked, “Where are my shoes?”
Writing Practice 1
Direction: Revise the words in the following sentences that
need a capital letter.

1. wotan is one of the gods in wagner’s ring cycle.


2. george washington was the first president of the united
states.
3. terry and clara went to bogor botanical garden last july
4. she has a new friend from london, england.
5. do you have any time on monday?
6. maia tran, my vietnamese friend, became an american
citizen in 1990.
7. paul revere rode through the night shouting, “the british
are coming! the british are coming!”
8. he said, “treat her as you would your own daughter.”
9. we are planning a vacation in north sumatera.
10. have you ever attended the techno land convergence
festival?
11. the pastor prayed that god should deliver us from our
sin.
12. she will fly to surabaya and bali next december.
13. they visited bob last winter.
14. have you ever had any really expensive french wine?
15. the last time i talked to peter he said, “study hard and
get to bed early!”
2. PUNCTUATION
The standard marks of punctuation
1. A sntence ends with a period, an exclamation point, or a
question mark
 A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a
period, the period often being called a full stop.
 What a lovely time we had!

2. Punctuation within a sentence


a. Comma (,)
 A series of nouns: Willy buys a computer, a printer, and a
scanner.
 A series of verbs: They listen, speak, and write.
 A series of phrases: The story books tells about struggling
of life, facing the real life, and believing in faith.
 A series of adjectives: She looks elegant, beautiful , and
smart.
• A series of clauses: In fact, the bus was full of people who got
dressed, who brushed their teeth, and who ate breakfast in the
morning.

• To enclose insertions or comments (The comma is placed on either


side of the insertion): Romeo and Juliet, one most popular work of
William Shakespeare, is adopted into movies many times.

• To set off words of direct address, whether they come at the beginning,
the middle, or the end of the sentence: Mary, are you almost ready
to live?

• To mark off interjections like ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘yes’:


Yes, I will stay a little longer, thank you.

• To set off in letter writing between the day and the year: September 15,
2018

• To mark direct speech: Milly said, “I will go home early.”


b. Semicolon(;)

 To connect closely related independent statements


or clauses where no conjunction is used: She loves
Spain, she wants to live there in the rest of her
life.
 To separate two statements or clauses when the
second one begin with a connector that is
conjunction adverb: They had too much work
yesterday; therefore, they took overtime.
 To set off a semicolon between items in a series if
any of members of the series contain commas: We
went shopping to several malls at weekends:
Margo City, Depok; Grand Indonesia, Central
Jakarta; and Blok M Plaza, South Jakarta.
c. Colon(:)

 To introduce summary or general assumption: We suspect by


seeing the look of this man: the thief of the stolen car.
 To indicate definition, balance, restatement, or opposition:
The sun sets: it is the time in the evening when you lastly
see the sun in the sky.
 To mark a colon before after the salutation in a business letter:
Dear Dr. Ann:
 Note : for personal letter just use a comma: Dear Maria,

d. Hyphen(-)

 To set off compound adjectives: a never-ending story, well-


written novels
 To set off prefixes for nouns or adjectives: pro-Western
 To mark between numerator and denominator of a fraction:
three-fourth
e. Parentheses (…)
 To enclose explanatory words: Titanic (the legend
of giant ship) drowned in the Pacific Ocean.
 To give a series of numbers: The causes of the
students’ error on writing skills are assumed: (1)
carelessness, (2) language interference, and (3)
lack of translation.

f. Apostrophe (‘)
 To show possessive case: Anita’s mother will come
to your house tonight.
 To indicate that one or more letters have been
omitted in a contraction: He’d, isn’t
g. Quotation Mark(“…”)
 To mark a direct sentencesentence: Mike said, “It will be
better if you go now.”
 To mark unusual word or phrase: She teaches the
students with her “angel hands”.
 To quote original information from other resources
“ People in Britain and America understand each
other perfectly most of the time, but there are a
differences in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and
pronunciation. With vocabulary, the same word may
have different meaning. E.g. British chips are
American French fries…”(Redman, 2001:200)
 To mark short stories, poems, chapters, articles, and other
parts of book and magazine: Have you read Shelley’s
poem “ The Cloud”?
Writing Practice 2
Direction: Add punctuation marks where they belong .
1. What is the date of our class party Mr Hall asked the
students
2. Dr Johnson asked Steven Did your family visit the beach last
summer
3. Noels and Olivias paychecks were not as much as they had
expected after working so many hours this week
4. The daily newspaper contains four sections news sports
entertainment and classified adds
5. Yesterday was her brothers birthday so she took him out to
dinner
6. Talking about studying students should do it intensively to
pass all the taken subjects
7. Prewriting drafting revising editing and publishing are steps
of the writing process
8. Jane overslept for three hours she was going to late for work
again
9. Before arriving at the station the old train someone said that
it was a relic of frontier days caught fire
10. July 22 2011 was a momentous day in his life
11. The conference was attended by delegates from Paris France
London UK Stockholm Sweden Perth Australia and Mumbai
India
12. She placed the following items into the trolley beer fruit
vegetables toilet rolls cereals and cartoons of milk
13. She adopted a two year old cat
14. No you did not have permission to stay out this late
15. Wed like you to be a part of the decision making process
3. SPELLING
 Sounds and Letters
 There are 26 letters in the English alphabet.
 But in spoken English we use around 44 different sounds (the
number varies slightly depending on our accent).

 Vowels and Consonants


 The letters a, e, i, o, u are often said to be vowels.
 The other letters of the alphabet (b, c, d, f etc.) are often said to
be consonants.

 Digraphs
• A digraph can be defined as a pair of letters which stand for a
single phoneme.
• A digraph can be either a vowel digraph or else a consonant
digraph ( ay, which usually make the /eɪ/ sound as in ray, say,
stay, day, say, play, spray ; ch, which makes the /tʃ/ sound as in
watch, chick, chimpanzee, and champion;)
SPELLING

 Diphthongs
• A diphthong is also known as a gliding vowel.
• A diphthong can be understood as a syllable where the
individual has to produce two different sounds. (ou,
which make the /aʊ/ sound as in out, round, bounce)

 Homophones
• A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same (to
varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning.
• A homophone may also differ in spelling (break/brake,
compliment/complement, then/than)
Writing Practice 3
Underline the correct word based on the context of the sentence!

1. There is a pair/pear tree in the yard.


2. She broke her right/write leg.
3. The clouds are hiding the son/sun.
4. All the boats are on sale/sail.
5. To bake a flower/flour-shaped cake, you'll need some flour/flower.
6. At my beach house, I love to wake up and see/sea the sea/see.
7. My cat was crazily chasing his tail/tale while I read a
fairy tale/tail to my children.
8. The meat/meet wasn’t cook properly.
Thank You

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