Elements of Style Chapter One

The first two rules of this book are fairly straightforward. They describe the usage of possessive " 's" and the use of commas in a list, which I have known for a while now. Also the book describes the use of commas in parenthetic clauses as well as using a comma with and or but introducing an independant clause. One rule that I must learn from is a parcipital phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. This is important to me becuase my sentences can be awkward. My parcipital phrases might not refer to the right subject grammatically, when I think they do in my own head. Another rule is to divide words at line-ends in accordance with their pronunciation. I would only use this when I have to write in right-justified, but I rarely do that. Regardless, I will have to someday and I have to remeber this rule because it never occured to me to do so.