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Krath Grammar Studies
Pontiff: Krath Arch Priestess Tirna Q'jira
Introduction
As Krath, our words are our swords. Our principle function is to write, scribe, and craft words and phrases into histories, tomes of lore, and books of magic rites. In order to do this effectively, however, it is of primary importance that we understand how our language works, and how best to use it to achieve our desired effect. This course will teach you how to sculpt your words and to paint your pictures in a correct fashion.
Sentence Structure
To be an effective author, you need to be able to form clear, correct and varied sentences.
Correct Sentences
Varied Sentences
A very good way to bore a reader is to tell your story with simple sentences alone. The old children's book See Spot Run went a little bit like this:
"See Spot run. Spot runs well. He runs to the fire hydrant. See Spot stop. See Spot..." I'm betting you can fill in the rest.
While informative, this text is not very interesting to read. To spice things up a bit, you need complex sentences.
One of the easiest ways to make a complex sentence is to use a relative pronoun to form a subordinate (or dependent) clause. A clause is incomplete on its own even though it contains a verb (you will see why in the following examples) but gives additional information about the subject.
The most common relative pronouns in English are "that", "which" and "who". Take for instance these two sentences: "I bought a ship." "I flew in it to Eos." Using the relative pronoun "that" or "which" we can make a single, shorter, more interesting sentence like this: "I bought a ship, in which I flew to Eos." That can also be expressed like this: "I bought a ship that I flew in to Eos." Take note of three things:
1. once you have put in the relative pronoun to form the subordinate clause it is not complete on its own - "That I flew in to Eos" is incomplete.
2. the preposition used in the original sentence must be used in the subordinate clause (in this case "in");
3. the use of "which" always requires a comma, whereas the use of "that" does not.
"Because", "since", "and", "but", "if", "when", "after" etc. can be used as conjunctions (joining words) to connect two complete sentences together. For instance, the two sentences, "I eat fish." and "I think they taste good." can be combined as follows, "I eat fish because I think they taste good."
Contrary to popular myth, sentences MAY begin with "because." For example, "Because I want to go back to school early, I am willing to pay for an earlier flight." However, you must be careful that you do not, in the process of using a conjunction to start a sentence, accidentally let a dependent clause stand alone and fail to complete the sentence, thus leaving it as a fragment.
You should note that "because," and "since" can mean the same thing, and then you may use each of them as you choose. "Because," (sometimes in speech found as " 'cause" with the apostrophe to show letters have been missed out) is slightly less formal. "Since" is also used in the time sense, "I have been in the Emperor's Hammer since I met Gidda on IRC and he recruited me," so it is not totally interchangeable with "because". Many words in English can be used in several ways, so be careful to use each word and its synonyms (same meaning) and homonyms (similar spelling and pronunciation) correctly.
A final tip - if you are having difficulty getting your complex sentences correct, break them down. You should start by removing any subordinate clauses (usually separated by a comma) and then look at your basic sentence (the main subject and verb). When those are correct, it will be easier to fix your subordinate clause and insert it for a finished and perfect sentence.
Verb Form
In this section we will cover tense, aspect/voice and mood; we will also cover how to form adjectives and adverbs from a simple verb.
Tense tells your reader, and indeed yourself, in what time period the events you describe take place. It is important that the tense of your work be appropriate, and consistent. Below you will find a table describing the tenses, and what they mean; below that, you will find a few examples of each tense, given in a sentence so that you may know in what context you may use each tense.
Common Tenses for verb "to answer" (this form of the verb to --- is called the infinitive because it has no tense or time)
Present
Past
Future
Examples:
Present Tenses
"I am waiting for someone," she told him. "I am afraid that I cannot help you as my friend has just arrived."
As you can see, the present tense is mostly used in direct speech. It denotes that an action is currently taking place, and is not yet complete. Though the perfect tense describes a completed action, it is counts as a present tense because it always has strong implications for the present.
Past Tenses
1. He was walking along the road when the tree fell on him.
2. When she opened the door, she noticed that he was sleeping. He used to sleep in the afternoons.
The past simple tense is the most commonly used tense in writing, and is used to denote a past, completed action.
The imperfect or continuous past tense is usually used in conjunction with the simple past simple tense, and denotes an incomplete, continual, or habitual action in the past.
The pluperfect tense is usually used in conjunction with other past tenses, and is used to show an action further in the past than the main action.
1. He had completed his task when the door swung open.
2. He had just ignited his new lightsaber when he became aware of a presence in the room.
3. Whilst she was sleeping, he had broken a vase.
Future Tenses
1. He will not find a warm welcome here.
2. We will soon be consumed with wrath.
The future tense denotes an action that has not yet taken place.
The future perfect is less common. Its other name the future in the past helps explain its use: it shows that of two future actions, one will clearly happen before the other.
1. It is claimed that by the time the new law is implemented, tens of thousands of criminals will have escaped justice.
2. It is thought that the hunt will be delayed until late summer, by which time protest groups will have fully organised themselves.
It is important that you always be aware what tense you are writing in, because your tense should stay consistent unless you are deliberately shifting from one tense to another, like when a character using a present tense narrative has a flashback to previous events or in conversation. When proofreading, make sure to check your tenses, you should not have random shifts, they should be purposeful.
Voice
Sentences in English can be written in either the active or passive voice. The active voice is preferable and more effective for most uses, and so you should write mostly, if not totally in the active voice. You might use the passive voice in a dialog (where such expression is appropriate to the character) or in official news or scientific reports where the subject is deliberately being de-emphasised or removed altogether because of the unbiased nature of the writing, because it does not matter who did the action, or because the speaker is trying to minimise responsibility for the action.
For example, active voice sentences include:
1. The cat ate the fish.
2. Yesterday the President made the announcement that there would be petrol rationing.
Passive voice examples:
1. The fish was eaten by the cat.
2. The reacting agent was added to the solution.
3. The announcement that there would be petrol rationing was made yesterday.
As you can see, the use of the passive or voice changes the sentence structure around. The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the sentence in the passive voice. The subject of the sentence in the active voice has become the agent of the sentence in the passive voice, if it is needed. The basic meaning of a passive sentence should not be any different from the meaning of the active sentence but it can change the effect of the sentence, as you can see from the example above.
Mood
A verb not only has two aspects/voices, but also two moods. The technical terms for these moods are indicative and subjunctive. The indicative is the mood that is used most often - the majority of this course is written in the indicative mood. Unlike French, or Latin for example, English does not use the subjunctive mood to a large extent. In fact, it is a nearly obsolete form in the English language. However, there are certain cases where a subjunctive is used, and it is well to know which these cases are. Note the following:
1. What would you do if you were rich?
2. I would like to look at that picture.
3. I wouldn't do that if I were you.
4. I shouldn't think that that was wise.
5. I might go out tomorrow.
Basically, the subjunctive mood describes possible situations, wishes, or things that haven't happened yet and may not happen. Unlike in some other languages, the construction is not extremely different from other sentences with helping verbs, so it shouldn't cause you much trouble.
Nouns
In this section we will deal with plurals and the possessive.
Plural nouns denote a group of two or more items. The formation of a plural in English is extremely easy. Below are some simple rules for the formation of a plural.
A possessive noun is one that uses the apostrophe (e.g. The Grand Master's book). It is one of the only two situations in English in which you may use an apostrophe ('). The rules for use vary depending on whether the noun ends in an s or not. The rules are given below.
1. sword - sword's: The sword's blade shone bright in the darkness.
2. children -children's: The children's mother laughed.
3. men - men's: The men's swords all fell to the ground.
1. if the noun is singular (e.g. Thomas etc), then you have one of two alternatives. Either add ' to the end of your noun, or add 's. There is no grammatical difference. Usually ' only is used in writing and 's in speech.
2. if the noun is plural, add ' to the end of the plural noun. It is grammatically incorrect to add 's e.g. The horses' saddles were heavy.
N.B. If the word ends in double s, add 's e.g. the princess's crown.
Punctuation
In this section you will learn how to use full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, quotation marks, apostrophes and commas etc. correctly.
1. First and foremost, they are used to denote a change between main sentence and subordinate clause e.g. I was born in this town, in which I have lived less than half my life.
2. Secondly, a comma is used to mark a list e.g. Apples, bananas, grapes and oranges are all types of fruit.
3. A comma is also used to separate who speaks in speech from the actual speech itself e.g.
"Arthur dear, there's a dragon over there," said Guinevere.
Guinevere said, "Arthur, dear, there's a dragon over there."
"Arthur dear, there's a dragon over there," said Guinevere, " and he's looking this way."
Note that the second part of the speech is in the same sentence as the conjunction and is used so there is a comma after Guinevere and a small a is used. Compare this with a new sentence in the second part of the conversation
"Arthur dear, there's a dragon over there," said Guinevere. "He's looking this way.
There must be some punctuation: comma, full-stop, question mark or exclamation mark before the final quotation mark (as in the examples above). The use of a comma before speech begins is mandatory and cannot be replaced with anything.
4. Another use of the comma is to separate a linking phrase from a sentence e.g. Not only this, but he repeatedly and maliciously ripped up the wallpaper.
They are definitely acceptable English punctuation, but they should not be overused. Remember that they indicate dramatic pauses, and like so many of the tools available to a writer, if used too often, they will lose their effect.
Dialogue, Monologue, Internal Monologue
When writing a story, chances are your characters are going to want to speak to themselves, in their heads, and to each other. In order to write these correctly, you will have to follow a number of rules.
First, every time there is a change of speaker, you start a new paragraph. This generally means moving down to the next line and indenting the line (technically indentation is required, but it is sometimes acceptable to not use it, so long as you are consistent). Here is an example of this:
"The dog is over there," she said.
"Yes, I see it," he replied.
This example highlights another important rule, already mentioned in the comma section. When adding narrative description to your dialog, you must end the speech with a comma, exclamation mark, or question mark inside the quotation marks. The following description will begin with a lower case letter, as it is a part of the same sentence. You can also add description in the middle of a speech like this:
"What's that?" he shouted, turning, "Did I hear a gundark over there?"
If the sentence is continued across the narrative interjection, resume it with a lower case letter to indicate that.
"I saw it run that way," said the nervous Padawan, "and I think it is coming after us."
Monolog and internal monolog are set out using the same rules as dialog; except that thoughts should be specified: he thought to himself is a good one. Also, when writing long speeches that require more than one paragraph, either in dialog or monolog, you do not close quotation marks if the same character will be speaking the next paragraph, though you still put the opening speech marks at the beginning of the paragraph. Like this:
(Long paragraph of speaking ending with)... and he was killed by the dragon.
"But that was not the end of the story." (continuing long speech.)
Sometimes, it is acceptable to denote internal monolog with italics, but again, the key is to be consistent so your reader will understand what you are doing.
Capital Letters
Capital letters are used for several functions in English. Firstly, they are used to denote the start of a new sentence. Secondly, they denote a proper noun (name of a specific person, place, or thing) e.g. Guinevere; Camelot; a Tuesday in August. Abbreviations like EH or DB should also be capitalized. These are the only cases in which a capital letter should be used.
Miscellaneous Points
An or A?
This is a small, but important point of grammar, and one that will elevate your grammatical style. You should remember that a word that begins with a vowel should be preceded by an e.g. an apple. A word that starts with a consonant should always be preceded by a e.g. a lightsaber). Note that with words starting with h, it is now acceptable to use an or a e.g. a historian or an historian.
Susie and I; Joe and me
Using these constructions correctly will help your writing, and often the speaking of your characters, to sound a great deal cleaner and more correct. Me and I are used different situations.
I is the subject form of the pronoun so: Keldorn and I decided how to grade the Krath Grammar Studies exam.
Me is the object form so: Ronin gave Keldorn and me medals.
A simple tip to decide which to use in most situations is to remove the other person's name and just focus on the me or I. For instance, in the above sentence, remove Keldorn and. Now look at the sentence. Which is correct? Ronin gave I medals or Ronin gave me medals? You would never dream of saying the first. The fact that there is another person involved does not change the rule. Simply add in the other person without changing the personal pronoun and the sentence will be correct. Note that the personal pronoun should always come last, an easy way to remember this is that it is a matter of politeness: always announce others before yourself.
One very common example that you need to remember correctly is this: Ronin shared the ammunition between Keldorn and me. Never write or say Between you and I.
