Outcome 6 (Sentence-Level Error) – Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling) (249 words)

Before this semester, I was pretty certain that my writing needed little improvement when it came to sentence level error. I could not have been more wrong however, as throughout the semester, with help from peers and Professor Brod, I was able to acknowledge some glaring issues within my writing. The two biggest issues I had to face were passive sentences and overuse of semicolons. 

While passive sentences are usually popular in scientific writing, they do not provide a very strong argumentative feel to your writing. I noticed that my sentences, when I wrote them passively, were weaker, and less interesting to read. Once I learned what to look for, I started to get rid of as many passive sentences as I could. The result is sentences that are more gripping and feel more strong just based on the movement of my subject. Below is an example of where I changed to an active sentence (image 1):

Semicolons are my favorite piece of punctuation to use; Connecting two related ideas while still giving the reader a second to digest the sentence prior has always been really interesting to me. Though, I did start to notice that semicolons made my work too dense to understand. Semicolons almost ask the reader to hold on to all the information of the previous sentence and then apply it to the next, which can be overwhelming. Below is a sample of my essay 3 thesis, before and after I removed the semicolon (images 2 and 3):