J 101

With the very few assignments left to do as I wrap up my spring term, J 101 has taught more things than any other class and completely changed the way I view English grammar now. At the beginning of the term, I believed I was decent at grammar and had a good understanding of most of the rules and how they played into the English language. Before J 101, I had this misconception that whatever sounds good or appears to sound fluid is seemingly always correct. Although much of a sentence has to do with its fluidity, but just because something sounds right doesn’t always mean its grammatically correct. Along with making sure my writing is not only fluid, but follows correct grammatical rules; one of the most helpful and useful rules in grammar is how to introduce quotes.
In terms of introducing quotes, you can use an introductory phrase naming the source, followed by a comma. Note that the first letter after the quotation marks should be upper case. For example,
The two ideas can be separate sentences, but you think that they are so closely connected; they really should be one. Use a semicolon. For example, the sentence “Mary has to walk her dog every day; it is the most hyperactive dog anyone has ever seen” brings both ideas about Mary having to walk her dog daily and how active the dog is. The semi-colon allows writers to easy bring two ideas or potentially two sentences together and make the fluidity of the writing smoother. As far as becoming a better writer, J 101 has taught me more useful knowledge that any other class and will be something I will continue to use in my potential journalistic career. J 101 will probably stop me one day from making a grammatical mistake that will may cause ambiguity in my will and ruin all my post-death plans. In the grand scheme of things, grammar as a Journalism major is a key element of developing your writing