Grammar Quiz 1

It’s another week. What am I thinking? With all the weeding I’ve been doing, I’m wondering how that connects to writing.

You have to recognize the weed as such before you pull it. You don’t want to remove the horses’ favorite grasses. (There are even some weeds they like to eat!)

What are the weeds in your 700-page novel? Pulling some of these may or may not shorten your WIP, but they will improve your writing. The horses will not have to hunt so much for the good grass.

This short quiz will help you find your weeds.

Answers follow.

QUIZ

1. unnecessary adverbs? (Not all adverbs end in “-ly,” but most of them do.)

The very tall man sneaks quietly through the thickly dense forest, almost ignoring the birds singing in the early morning.

Identify the adverbs. Do they add necessary information?

2. redundant adjectives

The lush, green, verdant vegetation slows his desired progress as he munches on his cold, thawing breakfast burrito.

 Identify the adjectives. Which ones are unnecessary and could be deleted?

3. fragments in narrative

As the sun climbs higher in the east, with the shadows appearing in the meadow, the elk grazing undisturbed. He motions to the woman behind him. “Look! We found them. All thirty of them.”

 Which of the above are fragments? Are any of them legitimately used?

4. subject-verb agreement

The bull, watching over his herd of 27 cows, some of them still lying down with their calves, stand/stands guard at a distance.

Which verb is correct, “stand” or “stands”?

5. misplaced modifying phrases or words

The human observers snap pictures with their cameras.

Where should “excited at their find” be located in the above sentence? How should it be punctuated?

6. “it’s” instead of “its” or the other way around

Her camera, with its/it’s new telephoto lens, clicks its/it’s photos faster than his. “Its/It’s wonderful,” she whispers. “Its/It’s the first time I’ve seen so many.”

 Select the appropriate forms of “its/it’s.”

*****

Answers to Quiz 1:

1. The very tall man sneaks quietly through the thickly dense forest, almost ignoring the birds singing in the early morning.

• Adverbs: very, quietly, thickly, almost 
• Adverbs describe or add to the action of verbs, to adjectives, or to other adverbs. 
  • The man is not just tall. He is “very” tall.
    • (adverb describing the adjective “tall”)
    • Does this extra height matter?
  • How does he sneak? Quietly.
    • adverb describing the verb “sneak”)
    • Does not “sneak” imply “quietly”?
  • The forest is not just dense. It is “thickly” dense.
    • (adverb describing the adjective “dense”)
    • Is “thickly” necessary to describe “dense”?
  • “Almost” qualifies his ignoring the birds. He hears them, but not enough to realize they are singing.
    • (adverb describing “ignoring”)
    • Does it matter whether he hears them or not?
• “Early” can be either an adjective or an adverb.
  • “early morning” = In this sentence, “early” is an adjective describing the noun “morning.”

2. The lush, green, verdant vegetation slows his desired progress as he munches on his cold, thawing breakfast burrito.

• Adjectives: lush, green, verdant; desired; cold, thawing
  • (The semicolon in this list is a super comma dividing the list into three sections, one for each noun.)
  • “desired” is a past participle (“have -ed” form) functioning as an adjective
  • “breakfast” is a noun functioning as an adjective in the compound noun “breakfast burrito”
• Repetitive adjectives
  • lush, green, verdant. Depending upon your understanding of “lush,” all three could be equivalent. Two of the three would be unnecessary.
  • cold and thawing. A thawing breakfast burrito would be cold. “Thawing” implies recently out of the freezer. Which one fits the context better?
• A noun describing a noun
  • “breakfast” is a noun. “burrito” is a noun.
    • “breakfast burrito” is a compound noun.
  • In theory, nouns do not describe nouns. In practice, they often do.
    • Examples: iron gate, steel wool, enemy spy

3. As the sun climbs higher in the east, with the shadows appearing in the meadow, the elk grazing undisturbed. He motions to the woman behind him. “Look! We found them. All thirty of them.”

• A fragment is an incomplete sentence, an incomplete thought.
  • “As the sun climbs higher in the east,” is a dependent clause.
    • This is a fragment because of “As.” The clause has a subject (“the sun”) and a verb (“climbs”), but it leaves the reader wondering what happens during the time indicated by “As.” 
  • There is no independent (main) clause (no complete sentence) following the “As” clause.
  • A rewrite of this could change “grazing” to its present tense, “graze.”
    • As the sun climbs higher in the east, with the shadows appearing in the meadow, the elk graze undisturbed.         
    • If there were only one elk, “the elk grazes undisturbed,” but we know there are thirty.
    • “Elk” is the same in both the singular and the plural.
  • Or it could be connected to the following sentence with a comma and a lower-case “h.”
    • As the sun climbs higher in the east, with the shadows appearing in the meadow, the elk grazing undisturbed, he motions to the woman behind him.
• All thirty of them.
  • “All thirty” could be the subject, the doer; but there is no verb, no action.
  • “All thirty of them” is acceptable because in dialogue, people often speak in fragments.

4. The bull, watching over his herd of 27 cows, some of them still lying down with their calves, stand/stands guard at a distance.

• Verb: “stands”
  • “The bull” is the subject. All the other numbers (“27”) or words implying more than one (“some,” “them,” “their,” “calves”) are part of the explanatory “watching over …” phrase.
  • Because “the bull” is singular, the “he/she/it” form of the verb (“stands”) is correct.
  • The bull, watching over his herd of 27 cows, some of them still lying down with their calves, stands guard at a distance.

5. The human observers snap pictures with their cameras.

• Matching the explanatory phrase with the correct noun.
  • Only the human observers would be excited, not the pictures or the cameras.
  • Because “excited at their find” is a phrase describing the observers, not necessary for the sentence, it is set off with commas. (“Necessary for the sentence” is not the same as “necessary for the reader.”)
    • The human observers, excited at their find, snapped pictures with their cameras.

6. Her camera, with its/it’s new telephoto lens, clicks its/it’s photos faster than his. “Its/It’s wonderful,” she whispers. “Its/It’s the first time I’ve seen so many.”

• with its new telephoto lens
  • “its” is possessive, like “his,” with no apostrophe
• clicks its photos
  • “its” is possessive, like “his,” with no apostrophe
• It’s wonderful
  • “It’s” = “It is,” a contraction, like “He’s” = “He is”
• It’s the first time 
  • “It’s” = “It is,” a contraction, like “He’s” = “He is”
  • Her camera, with its new telephoto lens, clicks its photos faster than his. “It’s wonderful,” she whispers. “It’s the first time I’ve seen so many.”

A score of five out of six on this quiz rates you a “Very Good.”

If you missed more than one on this quiz, click on the blog page for the problems this quiz diagnosed.