Grammar and Mechanics
Grammar, punctuation, and mechanics can be daunting and difficult to teach and learn in a classroom. Most of us acquire the basics of our native language/s as children. We absorb much of our language at a young age through example and practice. The written rules of English grammar, however, don’t always line up with our verbal customs. Add to that regional dialects, accents, and slangs, and you can have a difficult pickle on your hands when you find yourself plunging into collegiate and academic writing.
The purpose of this infoguide is to highlight some core fundamentals of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics that are often problematic to college students. This document is not intended to function as a catch-all for all matters containing grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. This isn’t the end-all, be-all grammar handbook. Far from it. Instead, it simply highlights a few of the core issues we often find in undergraduate writing — from sentence completion to comma usage, from run-on sentences to prepositional phrases. All students are of course strongly encouraged to utilize the resources available to you at the DSC Writing Center.