Grammar as Rhetoric and Style

All lessons and exercises come from The Language of Composition, which is available for purchase here.

Load a printable handout of the textbook lessons and readings below:

Check for understanding with these onomatopoeia quizzes:

[Ono.] Quizzes: Grammar as Rhetoric and Style

Use the first section on this page (“Why Learn This?”) to give more context to why this all matters.

Why Learn This?

This excerpt is found in Larry Trask’s Guide to Punctuation at the University of Sussex:

The problem with poor punctuation is that it makes life difficult for the reader who needs to read what you’ve written. That reader shouldn’t have to make allowances for your personal tastes in spelling and grammar: she expects to see standard English spellings and standard English grammatical forms. And the same is true for punctuation: she is most unlikely to know what your personal theories of punctuation are, and she won’t be interested in them. She’ll only be interested in understanding what you’ve written, and she’s going to have trouble understanding it if it’s badly punctuated.

When we speak English, we have all sorts of things we can use to make our meaning clear: stress, intonation, rhythm, pauses — even, if all else fails, repeating what we’ve said. When we write, however, we can’t use any of these devices, and the work that they do in speech must be almost entirely handled by punctuation. Consequently, written English has developed a conventional system of punctuation which is consistent and sensible: every punctuation mark has one or more particular jobs to do, and every one should be used always and only to do those jobs. If your reader has to wade through your strange punctuation, she will have trouble following your meaning; at worst, she may be genuinely unable to understand what you’ve written.

This is true for any element of writing, from arrangement to style, but it’s especially true for punctuation. In Trask’s account, the “she” stands in for all readers using Standard Written English, which is the prescribed form of English you must learn. David Foster Wallace’s argument for Standard Written English (SWE) in one of the most cogent:

In class — in my English class — you will have to master and write in Standard Written English, which we might just as well call “Standard White English,” because it was developed by white people and is used by white people, especially educated, powerful white people…
I’m respecting you enough here to give you what I believe is the straight truth. In this country, SWE is perceived as the dialect of education and intelligence and power and prestige, and anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE. This is How It Is. You can be glad about it or sad about it or deeply pissed off. You can believe it’s racist and unjust and decide right here and now to spend every waking minute of your adult life arguing against it, and maybe you should, but I’ll tell you something: If you ever want those arguments to get listened to and taken seriously, you’re going to have to communicate them in SWE, because SWE is the dialect our country uses to talk to itself.

This applies to everyone, even if they never want to write essays, stories, poetry, etc., and see that work published. John Cheese, writing at Cracked.com, puts it this way:

[S]ome schools still treat the subject of writing the way they did in 1911, when only a select few people would actually need to be able to write eloquently and all the rest just needed to know how to fill out a check at the feed store. Hell, when I was in high school, typing class was optional — and that was in the 90s. Today, you can’t function without a PC and every job makes you write.

…Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying you have to be Hemingway by any means. You don’t need to know how to write descriptions that touch the human soul. But you need to learn to be concise and clear in print, or it will be coming back to bite you… over and over.

He points out that “if you’re still in school, a significant portion of what you’re learning right now will be absolutely useless once you settle into your adult life,” but that writing and learning the basics of writing are not part of that:

Writing is one of those that gets thrown into the “useless [garbage]” pile because so much of English class is spent on obscure grammar rules and categorizing words. It comes off like another boring, arcane and ultimately useless subject. “Why do I need to know what a dangling participle is?” You don’t, but you do need to learn how to not accidentally type the opposite of what you meant. In an online world, your writing is going to form a shell around you, and most of the people who interact with you will only see the shell.

But again, until you’re in the break room and you overhear a coworker talking about how unfixably stupid you are… it’s not going to hit home. No amount of intelligence or degrees or life experience can make up for the fact that the majority of her contact with you is in the form of emails and memos — so the person she knows isn’t the educated, loyal employee and cool guy. She pictures you as a slobbering four year old, slamming his palms across a keyboard and hoping it forms a thought. Because to her, this is [stuff] that should have been learned in elementary school.

That, for us, is the most fundamental truth: You live in a world ruled by the written word. Cracks in the “shell around you,” as Cheese puts it, will affect you.

The Language of Composition: Grammar as Rhetoric and Style

These are the required readings and exercises for a deep dive into grammar, rhetoric, and style as elements of effective writing. Completing this work will require the following:

In-class focus | This is a student-driven unit designed to be completed in class. 40 minutes is enough time to read and annotate the lesson and complete most assigned exercises.
Collaboration | The selected exercises can be completed in groups, because they stress convergent thinking. You should also use any and all online resources available to you.
Proxy feedback | Class time will be structured so that proactive individuals can seek expert feedback and then teach what they’ve learned to others.
Radial feedback | Alternatively, you can schedule direct instruction for small groups, either after completing an exercise or as you work.

The thread woven through those requirements is student responsibility. You must be organized, self-aware, and open to feedback, especially feedback that corrects a lack of focus or self-control. You must also prioritize this work. It will improve your ability to write for any purpose, and it has the more immediate (if less universal) benefit of helping you on the analytical essays found on high-stakes tests like the SAT, ELA Regents Exam, and AP English Language & Composition Exam.

All notes, questions, and responses should be handwritten. This will promote a bit of kinesthetic learning, and it should help you interact more deliberately with the material. Only in rare, pre-approved cases should you type any of this work.

For each lesson, build your notes around the effect and usage of the central terms and concepts. Then complete the assigned exercises carefully and collaboratively.

Before you begin, make sure you recognize these parts of speech and punctuation marks:

Noun
Adjective
Pronoun
Conjunction
Verb
Adverb
: (colon)
; (semicolon)

You can click the links above this list to load online resources for parts of speech and punctuation.

Other notes:

Page numbers in the printed packet are not consecutive, but they are in ascending order. Pay careful attention to the page numbers for each assignment.
Not all printed sections have been assigned. The unassigned lessons are less helpful in constructing and deconstructing writing.
A PDF for each lesson is available through a link below. These are from a newer edition of the textbook. The page numbers will not match the photocopies.
One GARAS lesson, “Coordination in the Compound Sentence,” is not found in the digital version. You must use the printed copy.
The PDF for each lesson is locked so that only folks with a BCSD email address can access it. Do not print or share these digital copies.
In addition to the photocopied packets, there is a class set of The Language of Composition in our classroom. This is the earlier edition of the textbook, not the one shared online. You may sign out a copy whenever you like.