EDITING

YOU WILL NEED TO CORRECT THE

FOLLOWING TYPES OF ERRORS IN YOUR
ESSAY
• 1. Complete sentences

• II. Capitalization

• III. Commas

• IV. Subject and Verb Agreement

• V. Pronouns

• VI. Homophone errors

• VII. Dialogue rules

 COMPLETE SENTENCES (IN
RED)
• A sentence has two basic parts:

• 1) A subject (someone or something the sentence talks about)

• 2) A verb (what they do or what thy are)

• Example: Herbie eats Big Macs for breakfast.

• Herbie is a consumer of Big Macs.

 CAPITALIZATION RULES
• Capitalize the First Word of a Sentence

Ex: The cat is sleeping.

• Capitalize the names of SPECIFIC people and • Capitalize Cities, Countries, Nationalities, and
places. Languages

Ex: Wanda likes to go to Disneyland and dance with
Mickey Mouse.
• Capitalize Days, Months, and Holidays, But Not
Seasons
Ex: Wanda was born on Tuesday, July 4th, also known
as Independence Day. She goes to Peru every summer for
her birthday.
• Capitalize Most Words in Titles (usually nouns,
verbs, adjectives, or adverbs)
Ex. People from Lima, Peru are Peruvians. They
speak Spanish. Some of them speak Quechua.
• Capitalize Time Periods and Events
Ex. The Women’s Suffrage Movement began
after the Civil War.
• Capitalize I when you are talking about yourself.
Ex. I did a lot of work on the DAR essay.

Ex: My favorite movie is Star Wars, but I also like

Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 COMMAS
• Commas indicate that the reader should pause. If
you read your draft out loud and hear yourself
stopping in the middle of a sentence, you probably
need a comma there.
 SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT
Certain subjects go with Incorrect:
certain verbs:
• We eats french
Correct: fries with peanut
butter. YUMMY!
I am a student at
SPPS.
 PRONOUN CASE
• Pronouns are words like he, she, they, or us. These are
used instead of using nouns like Herbie, Wanda, Fred and
Ethel, and Lorraine and I.

Correct: She goes to the park with him every day.

Incorrect: Him goes to the cleaners with she every week.

A list of all pronouns is on the next slide.

 HOMOPHONES
• Some words sound alike but are spelled differently,
depending on what they mean.

• Incorrect: He has bear feet.

• Correct: He has bare feet.

 DIALOGUE RULES
• 1. If you want to show people speaking use quotation marks.

• “ I can’t believe Mr. Reyburn is making us do all of this work.”

• II. Add commas OUTSIDE the quotation marks when using

words like said, etc. The period stays INSIDE the question marks.

• “ I can’t believe Mr. Reyburn is making us do all of this work.”,

said the busy junior high student.