The Semicolon

 

The semicolon is similar in name and appearance to the colon, but its function is unrelated; it serves as a weak period, as employed here, or as a strong comma, as shown in the next paragraph. In its weak-period guise, it marks the end of one statement and the beginning of another; however, it is appropriate in place of a period only if the second statement is closely related to or dependent on the first one. Note that when a semicolon appears in such a case, no coordinating conjunction (such as and or but) should follow it. (However, when the conjunctive adverb that begins this sentence, or others such as moreover or therefore, follows a semicolon, as occurs earlier in this paragraph, a comma should follow the word.)

A strong-comma semicolon is one used in place of two or more commas when the elements in a run-in list are themselves lists, as in this sentence: “The three most frequent color schemes in flags are red, white, and blue; red and white; and, tied for third place, red, yellow, and green and red, white, and green.” (Note that not all list items must include internal punctuation.)

Many writers are reluctant to use semicolons because they do not understand how to use the punctuation mark correctly or consider it overly formal, but its roles are simple and helpful.

Uses of Do

  “Do” is used with the simple present form of the verb to make a question: “Do you like pizza?” But I have seen “do” used with the “-ing” form of the verb:

“Does closing a scheme for new money pay off?”
“Does shutting furnace vents improve efficiency?”
“Does doing a tattoo hurt?”

Please explain.

Do may be used as either a main verb or as a helping verb. Its forms are do, did, (have) done, doing.

As a main verb, do means “to carry out some action.”

What shall I do about the spoiled fruit? (main verb)
Mr. Baxter does odd jobs. (main verb)
She did all the cleaning for her mother. (main verb)

As a helping verb, do is used to pose questions:

Do you live in the neighborhood? (The main verb is “do live.”)
Does your dog know the basic commands? (The main verb is “does know.”)
Didn’t I see you at the Court House yesterday? (The main verb is “did see.”

Do is used both to frame a negative statement and to contradict a negative statement:

A: I don’t think you know Charley. (negative statement)
B: I do know him. (contradiction)

A: I don’t think Mrs. Wong turned off the lights last night. (negative statement)
B: She did turn them off. (contradiction)

Do is used for emphasis:

I do love chocolate chip cookies!
Jack certainly does love his Monday night football!

The form doing can be used with a helping verb to form a main verb, as in “She was doing her best not to cry,” but in the examples that puzzle the reader, the -ing form doing is not part of the verb. It is a noun (gerund):

Does closing a scheme for new money pay off? (The verb is “does pay off.” The subject is “closing a scheme for new money.”)

Does shutting furnace vents improve efficiency? (The verb is “does improve.” The subject is “shutting furnace vents.”)

Does doing a tattoo hurt? (The verb is “does hurt.” The subject is “doing a tattoo.”

In some contexts, the verb do cannot be replaced. For example, “What shall I do?” But in many others, it can be replaced by a more specific verb. For example, “I’m doing the dishes” can be rephrased as “I’m washing the dishes.”

Here are some common expressions that use do as a main verb:

do a favor
do well/do badly
do good/do evil
do damage
do homework
do housework
do nothing
do research
do something
do the math
do one’s best
do 70 miles an hour
do time (serve a prison sentence)

From: Daily Writing Tips

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs—What’s the Difference?

A verb can be described as transitive or intransitive based on whether it requires an object to express a complete thought or not. A transitive verb is one that only makes sense if it exerts its action on an object. An intransitive verb will make sense without one. Some verbs may be used both ways.

The word transitive often makes people think of transit, which leads to the mistaken assumption that the terms transitive and intransitive are just fancy ways of describing action and nonaction. But these terms have nothing to do with whether a verb is active or not. A better word to associate when you see transitive is transfer. A transitive verb needs to transfer its action to something or someone—an object. In essence, transitive means “to affect something else.”

Once you have this concept committed to memory, spotting the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is quite easy.

How to Identify a Transitive Verb

Transitive verbs are not just verbs that can take an object; they demand objects. Without an object to affect, the sentence that a transitive verb inhabits will not seem complete.

Please bring coffee.

In this sentence, the verb bring is transitive; its object is coffee, the thing that is being brought. Without an object of some kind, this verb cannot function.

Please bring.

Bring what, or who? The question begs itself because the meaning of bring demands it.

Here are some more examples of transitive verbs and their objects.

The girls carry water to their village.

Juan threw the ball.

Could you phone the neighbors?

I caught a cold.

She loves rainbows.

Lila conveyed the message.

Each of the verbs in these sentences have objects that complete the verbs’ actions. If the objects were taken out, the results would be illogical and questions would be raised in the mind of the reader; for example, Lila conveyed. Conveyed what?

How to Identify an Intransitive Verb

An intransitive verb is the opposite of a transitive verb: it does not require an object to act upon.

They jumped.

The dog ran.

She sang.

A light was shining.

None of these verbs require an object for the sentence to make sense, and all of them can end a sentence. Some imperative forms of verbs can even make comprehensible one-word sentences.

Run!

Sing!

A number of English verbs can only be intransitive; that is, they will never make sense paired with an object. Two examples of intransitive-only verbs are arrive and die. You can’t arrive something, and you certainly can’t die something; it is impossible for an object to follow these verbs.

Transitive or Intransitive? Some Verbs Can Be Both

Many verbs can be classified as both transitive and intransitive depending on how they are used in a sentence.

Urged by the others, she sang.

She sang the national anthem at the hockey game.

After he cleaned up, he left.

He left the gift on the table.

To decide whether the verb is being used transitively or intransitively, all you need to do is determine whether the verb has an object. Does she sing something? Does he leave something? The verb is only transitive when the answer is yes.

When in doubt, look it up. In the dictionary, verbs will be listed as transitive, intransitive, or both right under the pronunciation key, and any possible differences in meaning between the two uses will be given as well.

Phrasal Verbs and Transitivity

Phrasal verbs can also be classified as transitive or intransitive.

Cindy has decided to give up sweets while she diets.

I hope Cindy doesn’t give up.

Give up is just one of many phrasal verbs that can be transitive or intransitive. Whether give up has an object or not will alter the meaning it conveys. The first sense of give up means “to forgo something,” whereas the second sense means “to stop trying.”

If we refuse to learn about transitivity, the Grammar Police will blow up our building.

When the Grammar Police confronted her about her verbs, she blew up.

The first sense of to blow up means to explode, whereas the second sense means “to express rage.”

Transitive or intransitive is just one of the many classifications a verb can have. Perhaps you will be inspired to read about more about the fascinating qualities of verbs.

 From:

Grammarly

Catherine Traffis

Basics

Three Cases of Complicated Parenthetical Punctuation

Inserting additional information into a sentence without careful consideration of sentence organization can create barriers to comprehension, especially when the parenthesis is complicated. Here are several sentences in which complex parenthetical phrases are not treated with care, followed by discussion and revision.
1. Consumers have the right to speak out or complain, and to seek compensation—payment or a replacement item—or redress—have a wrong corrected.
Here, the use of dashes to set off a pair of parenthetical phrases confuses the reader’s eye; use mirror-image parenthetical marks instead for a clearer picture of the sentence’s syntactical organization: “Consumers have the right to speak out or complain, and to seek compensation (payment or a replacement item) or redress (have a wrong corrected).”
2. They had an unwavering belief that they simply could not—or maybe more accurately stated, would not—be defeated.
Because “maybe more accurately stated” is a parenthesis within a parenthesis, a comma must precede as well as follow it: “They had an unwavering belief that they simply could not—or, maybe more accurately stated, would not—be defeated.”
3. If thorough controls are not in place, over time, as updates and changes are made to your environment, conflicts are likely to arise, posing varying levels of risk to your business and ultimately forcing you to revisit your design.
The number of commas in this sentence is excessive; when the phrase “over time” and the rest of the parenthetical phrase (ending with environment) is transposed, the comma between them becomes extraneous and the sentence structure is clearer: “If thorough controls are not in place, as updates and changes are made to your environment over time, conflicts are likely to arise, posing varying levels of risk to your business and ultimately forcing you to revisit your design.”

From: Daily Writing Tips

If You Want to Explain Your Science to the Public, Here's Some Advice

Recently, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, urged scientists to share their problem-solving innovations with the public in more accessible ways, including by using vernacular languages. This kind of openness and accessibility is important and needed. While most scientists publish their work in academic journals, only ten people, on average, read a given article in its entirety; so clearly, the general public is not being reached that way.

Translating complicated concepts that are jargon-heavy into terms and ideas the public can understand is not always easy. But, increasingly, scientists, university and research institutions, government institutions, and others are trying to find ways to do it. Professional societies like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Entomological Society of America offer a wide array of tools and programs like science communication courses and science policy fellowships to help scientists with dissemination. The National Academy of Sciences even recently released a report, “Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda,” to help scientists effectively communicate their research. An example of an international effort is the Imagine Project initiative, through which scientists take their research out of the laboratory and share it with rural and indigenous communities in Africa and Latin America.

These are great initiatives, but many young scientists, including PhD students, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career scientists need more guidance in maneuvering the art of effectively disseminating their science to the public. I witnessed this need first-hand when I recently spoke at Emory University about my research on beneficial soil microbes and their use in agriculture; I mentioned however since I learning the art of writing opinion pieces through participating in a training offered through the Aspen Institute New Voices fellowship, I had written more than 60 opinion pieces that have reached millions of people. The audience of PhD students and post-doctoral fellows clamored to know how they could similarly write about their research for newspapers and reach the kinds of audiences their journal articles never do. I know they are not alone in that desire.


While there are other ways to disseminate academic research to the public, including writing research and policy briefs, sharing it on university and research institutions websites and blogs, my experience of this has been through op-ed writing. This is my advice to scientists who also want to use op-eds to reach the average person:

The first step is to connect the research you are doing or pursuing to a bigger theme. Is it the environment? Climate change? Public health? As an example, my research on beneficial soil microbes ties into several major themes including climate change, food security and soil health.
Secondly, it is important to find the story and storyline in your research. How do the results of your research creatively link and connect to the global challenges facing humanity? Once you have this lined up, it is time to write the piece.

Op-eds are centered around an argument: essentially you are arguing for or against something. So, you must decide on this before you can write the rest of your piece. The core argument should only be a sentence long and stated in a way that is convincing to your readers. Think as you decide on this: What do you want to share with the world? Is it new? Why is it new? Or what is new about it? How is it different from other arguments about the subject theme that have been shared before?

Next, you need to build your evidence to support your argument. Often there are at least three main points of evidence. These pieces of evidence can include statistics and research, quotes from experts in the field, anecdotes and personal stories and news articles. For researchers, this should be easy since your piece will be focused on research findings.


The “to be sure” paragraph is an important part of an opinion piece. In this paragraph, you preempt people who may discount your argument by acknowledging their viewpoint and then by bringing in even more evidence to back up your own argument. This allows you to acknowledge the other side, but still, support your own.

An element of an op-ed that differs greatly from academic writing is the news hook. While often this goes in the first paragraph of the piece, it does not always have to be placed there. What a news hook does is tie your argument and research to the current issues of the day to show how it’s timely and why your research matters right now. This also helps when pitching your piece to editors because they need to know what is new and timely about your piece before deciding to accept it. While a news hook could be a news story, it can also include new research and studies, a new piece of legislation, or a holiday or anniversary of an event or law. A recent personal experience can also be used as a news hook.

The final concluding paragraph is where you summarize all the paragraphs with a catchy and thought-provoking sentence. This is also where you can place your call to action. Why did you spend all that time doing your research? What do you want your readers and decision-makers to do?


Most importantly, always remember to keep everything short and to the point because many media outlets have a word limit that ranges from 500 to 900 words. And then your piece is ready to pitch!
When scientists write and share their work with the public inaccessible ways, that is when the magic happens and we can build bridges between research and society, engage the general public and develop a critical dialogue about the solutions science offers.


The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
 




Esther Ngumbi
From: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/.../if-you-want-to-explain-your-science- to-the-public-heres-some-advice/