Writing a Literature Paper   Having trouble getting started with a paper for your literature class. When you are writing a literature paper, you begin by creating a thesis statement that offers insight into one aspect of the book. Your paper uses literary criticism to back up that thesis. Every aspect of the paper must relate back to the thesis. Thesis statements can revolve around: The characters in a work and how those characters develop; The religious or political symbols

Everything you write should start with a first draft. That means any creative or academic writing you work on will have to be read through before you turn it in. If you are hoping for an A+ paper, you should write a first draft, revise, edit, and proofread in that order.   Revising   This first step is different from editing. Revising involves writing and re-writing your content. As the author of your work, you are often adding, rearranging, or removing and replacing content

The semicolon is one of the most misunderstood forms of punctuation even though the rules for use are fairly simple. Beware, students—ACT creators loves to test on this punctation mark. When do you use a semicolon? When there are two independent clauses (can stand alone as sentences) on either side. The two clauses are not joined by FANBOYS (coordinating conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). The semicolon is only correct if it could be replaced by a period. A semic

The hyphen, the em dash, and the en dash are all easy to confuse. They are all lines used for punctuation, but they vary in length. Many writers mistakenly think they are interchangeable. They serve different purposes, however. The hyphen is the shortest of the three. It primarily serves to separate numbers (account numbers, phone numbers, etc.) and to combine words. For example, two words can be joined by a hyphen to make a compound descriptive word such as brother-in-law o

Nothing gets us in trouble more as a writer than misusing punctuation. A misplaced comma can often change the meaning of what we are saying and confuse our readers. To help you understand the basic rules, I am going to keep the sample sentences very basic.   First rule:  Any part of a sentence that can be deleted without changing the basic meaning of the sentence should have commas before and after that word, clause, or phrase.   Example: Oslo, who is my smallest dog, is lear