61 What is style in academic writing and why is it necessary?
61 What is style in academic writing and why is it necessary?
What is sentence “style”?
This kind of style refers to the particular way a sentence is crafted. We will look at not only the function of a sentence and how it works on its own, but also how it works within a paragraph and ultimately within the paper as a whole. Style isn’t necessarily the parts of speech like noun, verb, preposition, but instead, it’s how they are put together to make a clear and powerful statement.
Why do we need to know this?
Knowing how to write and speak well is highly important if you want people to listen to what you have to say. Having a powerful idea is useless if you can’t communicate it well enough for it to be heard. If your audience is having to fight through a haze of mechanical and grammatical errors, they will give up.
The Basics: Terms to Know, Sentence Elements, and Functions
Subject: Usually contains a noun or pronoun and is the topic of the sentence and does an action.
Predicate: This is the action that the subject does.
Independent clause: Contains a subject and predicate and can stand alone as a sentence. ( Ex. I run., He eats., They laugh.)
Dependent (subordinate) clause: Group of words that can’t stand alone as a complete sentence, but is dependent on, or subordinate to, the independent clause. (Ex. Although I run,).
Inverted sentence: When the writer inverts the subject-predicate order and places the action before the subject. (Ex. Never has she felt so beautiful.)
Direct vs. Indirect object: Ex. Sally bakes Joe a cake. The cake receives the action of being baked, which makes it the direct object; however, the cake is baked for Joe, so he is the indirect object.
Prepositional phrase: A word that indicates a relationship from one thing to another. Ex. around, up, under, in, and so on.
What are the different parts of speech and how do they function?
Parts of Speech:
Nouns – Persons, places, things, or ideas; function in a sentence as subject, direct object, indirect object, object complement, predicate nominative, object of a preposition, or appositive
Verbs – Actions or states of being; function in a sentence as either an action verb or a linking verb.
Pronouns – Words that take the place of nouns: function in a sentence as subject, direct object, indirect object, object compliment, predicate nominative, object of a preposition, or appositive
Adjectives – Describe nouns
Adverbs – Describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs
Prepositions – Words that signal prepositional phrases and show relationships between words and phrases; function in a sentence as either an adjective or an adverb
Conjunctions – Words that connect other words, phrases, and clauses; coordinating or subordinate.
Sentence constructions follow these basic patterns:
Subject/ verb: The dog ran.
Subject/ linking verb/ subject compliment: The dog is a German Shepard.
Subject /action verb/ direct object: The dog bit the mailman.
Subject/ action verb/ indirect object/ direct obj