Tutorial
Section 1: Grammar
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From a writer's perspective, grammar is the way that words are arranged into sentences. Because engineers and scientists are expected to write in sentences, you should know what a sentence is and is not. By definition, a sentence is a group of words with a subject and verb that gives a complete thought.
In science and engineering, two grammatical errors to avoid are a fragment (an incomplete sentence) and a run-on (two or more sentences incorrectly joined). A third common error of grammar is faulty parallelism, which often occurs with items in a list. In addition to helping you avoid grammatical errors, knowing grammar is important for recognizing telltale signs of AI-generated text. 
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If you selected all of the correct answers on the Kahoot, you can move to the next section: Punctuation. However, if you missed questions, you should work through the films and quizzes (below) that correspond to those missed questions.
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If you struggled with fragments or run-ons, view Films 1 and 2 and take the review quiz on fragments and run-ons. Note that if you are unfamiliar with the grammatical terms in these films, you should see the appendix at the end of this section of the guide.
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Film 1: Avoiding fragments. Film 2: Avoiding run-ons. |
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If you struggled with faulty parallelism, view Film 3.
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Film 3: Maintaining parallelism. |
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If you struggled with misplaced modifiers, view Film 4.
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Film 4: Avoiding misplaced modifiers. |
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Congratulations on having finished the grammar section.
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Appendix: Grammatical Terms
This appendix contains the following three items: (1) a list of important grammatical terms, (2) links to a glossary of those terms, and (3) additional films that explain many of those terms. While you do not need to have textbook definitions of the terms [4-6], you should feel comfortable enough with the terms that you could use them in a critique of a colleague's professional document:
This appendix contains the following three items: (1) a list of important grammatical terms, (2) links to a glossary of those terms, and (3) additional films that explain many of those terms. While you do not need to have textbook definitions of the terms [4-6], you should feel comfortable enough with the terms that you could use them in a critique of a colleague's professional document:
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Grammar: Clauses versus phrases. |
Grammar: Joining Independent Clauses. |
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