Tech Biz Writing

Morphemes
Morphemes are the parts of words which change when the word applies to a distinctly different situation. For example, a plural, or a change of tense. So that children is the plural of child, and “ren” is the morpheme. For a verb, we get: play plays playing played.

Phrases
Phrases are bundles of words which naturally cluster together and perform a particular function in a sentence. For example:

His beautiful girlfriend Sally has been assembling a new wardrobe of designer clothes.

You can easily divide this sentence into three parts:

His beautiful girlfriend Sally
has been assembling
a new wardrobe of designer clothes.

It will not divide any other way without losing its essential meaning, which can be reduced to three words: Sally bought clothes. These are phrases.

Clauses
Clauses are made up of either words or phrases, and each of these atoms has a different role in the process. Thus:

* Sally is the subject, or what the clause is about.
* bought is the verb, or the action part.
* clothes is the object, or what has been affected by the action.

Sentences
If, as is often said, a sentence is the complete expression of a single thought, what are we to make of those sentences in 19th-century novels which go on for more than a page or two? Or, by complete contrast, “sentences” in advertising-speak, such as Brilliant!

At its most basic, a sentence is the same as a clause: subject, verb, object, as in the above case. Sometimes, however, sentences consist of more than one clause, and the more they contain, the less easy they are to read.

Building Texts
The largest unit we have considered so far is the sentence, on the basis that words combine to form phrases which combine to form clauses which combine to form sentences. But sentences combine in many ways to form texts, and that is what we will now examine.

A text is a unit of communication which is largely self-contained and which serves a specific purpose. It contains a series of sentences which are related to each other by:

* Structure
* Coherence
* Cohesion

Structure
Many texts are given structure by a formal pattern, the most common of which is the paragraph. There are other conventions, however, e.g. the layout of some advertising copy or a recipe.

Paragraphs form a useful function in that they formulate sub-topics of the text into recognisable units, which break up the page and make it more comprehensible and easier to read. Though representing a sub-topic in the text, most paragraphs tend to lead on from the previous one, and provide a linkage with the next. Generally we can break down a paragraph into three sub-units:

* Topic sentence which introduces the main theme of the paragraph.
* Development sentences which take the theme forward.
* Rounding-off sentence which naturally concludes it and leads on to the next.

Next: 64. Creating texts — Part 3.

The putting together of texts from the individual atoms of writing involves another bete noire of the written universe: grammar. To say that grammar is easy is a very smug statement, especially as it’s scarcely taught in modern schools. Whole English departments are grammar-free zones. Yet you can hardly call yourself a writer if you know nothing of it, or imagine it’s a word describing your grandmother.

We’re going to tackle grammar here in its basic form, beginning with the atoms that compose it, and moving on to how these elements are put together for building texts. For that is what writing is: creating texts from smaller elements, while retaining coherence, cohesion, structure, and, ultimately, meaning.

The Levels of Grammar

Grammar operates at five levels of increasing complexity:

* Words
* Morphemes.
* Phrases
* Clauses
* Sentences

These all work together at any one point, so although we can define them singly, we must bear them all in mind when creating, or parsing sentences.

To make the point clearer, we shall examine all these levels in the context of a single sentence: The children played Scrabble while their father sent an email.

The sentence breaks naturally into parts, each virtually a complete sentence in itself:

* The children played Scrabble
* Their father sent an email.

The five levels of grammar are represented thus:

* Word: Children.
* Morpheme: Child - ren.
* Phrase: The children.
* Clause: The children played Scrabble.
* Sentence: The children played Scrabble while their father sent an email.

Words
Words are the building blocks of a text; they both bear the meaning and hold the sentences together. Thus there are two types of word.

* That carry meaning.
* That bind a sentence together.

The words that carry the meaning in the example sentence are:

children played Scrabble father sent email

Each has a specific meaning which can be defined in a dictionary.

The words which bind the sentence together are:

The while their an

These words don’t bear a specific meaning, but the dictionary tells us how they are to be used, e.g. “indicating a contrast”.

Apart from these two types, there are also classes of word. The meaning or content words are classed into:

* Nouns
e.g. Scrabble
* Verbs
e.g. played
* Adjectives
e.g. yellow
* Adverbs
e.g. quickly

Binding or structure words are classed into:

* Pronouns
e.g. she
* Conjunctions
e.g. while
* Prepositions
e.g. beside
* Determiners
e.g. an

Next : 63. Creating texts - Part 2