From Roger Corry

The above picture is a copy of one of the student’s speech at a High School debate tournament last Saturday. The story gets a little confusing in line 7 due to a sentence structure. The line can be confusing as to who died.

I learned several different things this week. The first is when to use the abbreviations for Ave, Blvd, and ST. These abbreviations are used with a numbered address like the following: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The book states the following, “Spell them out and capitalize when part of a formal street name without a number: Pennsylvania Avenue.” (Page 4). In the past I would always spell them out unless I was preparing an envelope to be sent through the mail. Similar words such as alley, drive, road, terrace and etc. should be spelled out completely.

The second grammar guidelines I learned was how to handle a book title. The book states the following, “Capitalize the principal works including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more words” also “Put quotations marks around the names of all such works except the Bible and books that are primarily catalogs, this category includes almanacs, directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, gazetteers, handbooks and similar publications.” (Page 58). Example: My favorite book is “Moby Dick”. The book also states to follow the same protocol when referencing a classical song.

It was also interesting to learn that the book is updated frequently because the English language is constantly changing.