Spelling and Grammar

Resources in the sections below have been created in response to common challenges UoC students experience with spelling, puncutation and grammar.

For additional language development guidance, please self-enrol on the English Language Support Blackboard site.

If there's anything that you want to understand better or you would like to see guidance about other aspects of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, please email skills@cumbria.ac.uk and our English Language Learning Developer will be in touch.

Punctuation: fullstops, commas, apostrophes, and more

Effective use of punctuation helps us communicate our meaning more clearly to our readers.

Some of the most common difficulties with punctuation are fullstops, commas and apostrophes. Take a look at these tutorials and guides to develop these key punctation skills.

Once we're feeling more confident with these key skills, explore the guide and tutorial on how to use semicolons.

Link to Guide/Tutorial	Details of Guide/tutorial
Fullstops and Commas Tutorial	Brief guidance and interactive tutorial to practise using fullstops and commas
Quick Guide to Fullstops	Detailed guidance with examples
Quick Guide to Commas	Detailed guidance with examples
Quick Guide to Semicolons	Detailed guidance with examples
Semicolons Tutorial	Brief guidance and Interactive tutorial to practise using semicolons
Apostrophes Tutorial	Brief guidance and interactive tutorial to practise using apostrophes

Remember to leave enough time to proofread your work before deadlines to check for accurate and effective use of punctuation.

laptop1, Laptop with a notepad and pen on it

Sentences: using punctuation & grammar to write better sentences

The resources in this section are designed to help write effective sentences.

Types of Sentences

We can improve our sentence structure through understanding how different types of sentence work, such as simple, compound, and complex sentences.

Link to Guide/tutorial	Brief details of guide/tutorial
Quick Guide to Basic Sentence Structure	Detailed guidance with examples of basic (simple) sentences.
Quick Guide Simple Compound Complex Sentences	Detailed guidance with examples of different types of sentences.
Complex sentences tutorial	Brief guidance and interactive tutorial to increase understanding of complex sentences

Punctuation and Sentences

We can also improve our sentence structure through more accurate use of punctuation, such as fullstops, commas and semi colons.

Link to Guide/Tutorial	Details of Guide/tutorial
Fullstops and Commas Tutorial	Brief guidance and interactive tutorial to practise using fullstops and commas
Quick Guide to Fullstops	Detailed guidance with examples
Quick Guide to Commas	Detailed guidance with examples
Quick Guide to Semicolons	Detailed guidance with examples
Semicolons Tutorial	Brief guidance and interactive tutorial to practise using semicolons

Subject-Verb agreement in sentences

Our writing also improves when we make sure things like the subject of our sentence matches the verb form. For example, a common mistake is to treat et al as if it represents only one author and write a singular verb form, rather than treat et al. as representing a group of authors in a sentence that we match with a plural verb form, eg:

We might mistakenly write: Brown et al. (2020) argues that ...

Instead of writing the more accurate: Brown et al. (2020) argue that ... (ie They argue that ...)

For guidance on checking that subject and verb forms match, explore the Quick Guide to Subject Verb Agreement

Spelling

Accurate spelling is important in academic writing and we can lose marks when our writing has spelling errors.

We can’t always rely on computers and need to refer to dictionaries as well.

For example, auto-correct in Word can often default to US spelling and grammar. We need to check that any settings we can change, we set to UK spelling and grammar.

When we know we find spelling particular words or groups of words challenging, we can look out for these in our work and check them.

To get started with improving spelling, check out this guide to Commonly Confused Words with examples

You can also complete an interactive lesson all about easily confused words.

This BBC Skillswise Guide to Spelling includes useful techniques to help with spelling using memory aids, plurals, common letter patterns, prefixes and suffixes and root words.

Remember to leave time to proofread your work for spelling errors.
Additional Resources

Here is a reading list with book titles to help improve spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Also, check out the English Language Support site on Blackboard.

If you experience any issues with the above link, click on Library, Academic and Digital Skills tile on the Student Hub to access the subdashboard. Then click on the English Language Support tile to self-enrol on this Blackboard site.

Proofreading

Guide to Proofreading and Editing Work

Also, see the Proofreading section on the Writing at University page.

Grammar
• English Plus+ online grammar (Bair, J. 2008): the 'Grammar Slammer'.
See also Grammar Slammer Run-on sentences and Sentence fragments.
For punctuation see the Grammar Slammer - punctuation.