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Use serial commas The APA Style guide actually requires the serial comma, and other major academic style guides, such as MLA and Chicago, recommend it. The serial comma is the comma before the conjunction in a list (e.g. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle). In some cases, the serial comma will be required even if

Semicolons (;) In contemporary academic writing, the oft-abused semicolon is appropriately deployed in only two situations: first, in place of commas when a list a is complex and, second, where periods could otherwise go. In the second case, it’s used when the connection between two sentences is closer than a period would suggest. First use

Simple examples of MEAL paragraphs What follows are some simple, stand-alone examples of MEAL paragraphs. Their simplicity should help you see the various parts of the paragraphs more clearly, but remember that in practice paragraphs will often be more complex, requiring more transition work. Additionally, the evidence and analysis steps are sometimes repeated within a single

Hyphens (-) Hyphens have many functions, but their main role is to link words (or parts of words). They most commonly appear with compound adjectives, phrasal verbs being used as nouns, and after some prefixes. Compound adjectives Compound adjectives consist of two words that work together to modify a noun form a compound adjective (or

Word Order Rules: Adverbials The examples in the article Word order rules in english outline all of the sentence positions in their most common ordering, except for one final kind of sentence positon: the adverbial. Adverbials are words or phrases that provide the information adverbs usually provide:information about the following: When (e.g. yesterday, in the middle of the