Conventions

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Conventions

• The sixth element of the
• 6 1 Writing Traits

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What are conventions?

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Capitalization
• Grammar
• Paragraphing
• Having correct conventions means that the reader
  can pay more attention to your creative thoughts
  and ideas.

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Spelling

• I dont know how to spell!
• I am a bad speller!
• You just tell me how to spell it!
• These excuses will not work. What should you do
  if you dont know how to spell a word?
• Look it up in the dictionary
• Ask a friend
• Look at the resources around you

4
Punctuation

• Know the different types of punctuation.
• period .
• comma ,
• question mark ?
• exclamation point !
• colon
• hyphen
• ellipse
• parentheses ( )

How are all of these punctuation marked used?
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Capitalization

• When do I use capital letters?
• Names of people Christopher Columbus
• Words used as names grandpa
• Titles used as names President Bush
• Abbreviations NFL
• Proper Nouns New York City
• Historical Information Civil War
• Organizations - Republican

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Capitalization continued

• Geographic Names Agusta, Maine
• Nationalities Egyptian
• Languages Spanish
• Titles Freckle Juice
• First Words The sky is blue.
• Days Months Monday, January
• Holidays Easter
• Greetings Dear Charlie,
• Closings Your friend, Margo

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Grammar

• Check all your sentences.
• One cool fall day Tom, Bill, and Bobby.
• One cool fall day Tom, Bill, and Bobby went to go
  fishing they caught only on fish all day.
• Do you have sentence fragments or run-on
  sentences?
• Do your subjects verbs agree?
• Bill walk to the fishing hole.
• Tom, Bill, and Bobby loves to go fishing.

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Paragraphing

• A paragraph is a group of sentences that
  concentrate on one topic.
• Indent each time you begin a new topic.
• Each paragraph should include a
• Topic sentence tells what the paragraph is
  about
• Body detail sentences that back up the main
  idea
• Closing sentence sums up the big idea

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Conventions

• In order to be good at editing you need to
  develop an eye for mistakes.
• Check everything
• Check it again
• Read it out loud
• Have a friend check it
• It is hard to edit your own paper because you
  know what you want to say. Although that may not
  be what is written on the page.
• Conventions is the most important of the traits.

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