• These were all invented by sadistic junior high school English teachers to terrorize students and confuse adults.

• No one can learn all those rules and terms, and besides, it doesn’t do anybody any good anyway.

• I can write. I’m just not very good at grammar and spelling.

• People who know all the rules for using commas are weird -- and dorks.

These are a few of the things you hear about grammar, spelling and punctuation. Maybe they even reflect some of your thoughts.

For media writers -- people who make their living in this profession, however, the rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation and style are essential. Knowing those rules and being able to apply them consciously to your writing is the mark of a professional. What you don’t know about these things, you should try to learn as quickly as possible.

Here are the main points of the lecture:

• Rules of grammar, punctuation and style are important to the professional writer.
  
  
• Knowledge of the rules and terms of grammar makes you a better writer.
  
  
• If you don’t know grammar and style, people are not going to take you seriously as a media professional.
  
  
• Professional writers develop a serious and continuing interest in the language and how it is used.

More lecture notes, etc.

Reading

Read Chapters 2 and 3 of Writing for the Mass Media. Make sure you understand all of the concepts and practices discussed there.

Reading room

They're cheap. Read about the professor’s strange collection. Click on the image to the right.

Plagiarism. Occasionally we have a problem with plagiarism in MC102. Plagiarism often occurs not because students are trying to cheat but because they do not understand exactly what plagiarism is. Consequently, we want every student in the course to complete this assignment on plagiarism.