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MECHANICS OF WRITINGSULIANA WAN CHIKENGLISH LANGUAGE UNIT

LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

IPGM KAMPUS PERLIS

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Writing

- Writing is a system for interpersonalcommunication

- Visible signs or graphic symbols areused on paper, cloth or even stone slabs

- Writing is thinking put on paper

Mechanics of writing

Capitalisation Punctuation Spelling

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Capitalisation

Main uses of capital letters First word in a sentence or direct

quotation

Names of persons and the word I Names of particular places

Names of days of the week, months, andholidays

Names of commercial products Titles of book, magazines etc

Names of companies, associations,unions, club etc

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...main uses First Word in a sentence or direct

quotation The corner grocery was robbed last night.

The alien said, Take me to your leader.

Names of persons and the word I Last night, I saw a hilarious movie starring

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Names of particular placesAlthough Bill dropped out of Port Charles

High School, he eventually earned his

degree.

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...main uses Names of days of the week, months

and holidays On the last Friday afternoon in May, the

day before National Day, my boss ishaving a barbeque for all employees.

Names of commercial products My little sister knows all the words to thejingles for NTV7, Astro etc

Titles of books etc We read the book Hiroshima, by John

Hersey, for our history class

Names of Companies, associations

etc

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Lets now try to do Exercise 1

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/Capitalisation.dochttp://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_2/Capitalisation.doc

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Punctuation

Punctuation (a point) means the rightuse of putting in Points or Stops in

writing.

The following are the principal stops:- Full Stop or Period (.)

Comma (,)

Semicolon (;) Colon (:)

Note of interrogation (?)

Note of exclamation (!)

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...punctuation

Full Stop

Represents the greatest pause and

separation.

It is used: To mark the end of a declarative or an

imperative sentence

e.g The building burned down last night.

Please go with me to the lecture

Indirect Questions

e.g People wonder why they have to pay such

high taxes.

She asked me where I had gone to college.

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...punctuation

Comma

Represents the shortest pause.

It is used to:-

Separate a series of words in the sameconstruction.

It was a long, dull, and wearisome journey.

Separate each pair of words connected by and.

High and low, rich and poor, wise andfoolish, must all die.

After a Nominative Absolute

The bridge being built, the British set out to

destroy it.

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...comma

Separate short independent clauses joinedby coordinating conjunctions.

No one voted in the election, and the Parliament

stood empty for five years.

To mark off a direct quotation from the rest

of the sentences.

Exactly so, said Alice.

To separate a Noun clause- whether subjector object preceding the verb.

Whatever is, is right.

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Semicolon

Represents a pause of greaterimportance than that shown by a

comma.

It is used:- To separate the clauses of Compound

sentence, when they contain a comma.

He was brave, large-hearted man; and we allhonoured him.

To separate a series of loosely related

clauses.

Today we love what tomorrow we hate; today

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Colon Marks a still more complete pause that

that expressed by the semicolon. It is used:-

To introduce a quotation.

Bacon says: - Reading makes a full man,writing an exact man, speaking a ready man.

Before enumeration.

The principal parts of a verb in English are: the

present tense, the past tense, and the pastparticiple.

Between sentences grammatically

independent but closely connected in

sense.

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THANK YOU

Leech, G., Conrad, S., and Biber, D. (2002). Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and

Written English. London : Longman