Ratiocination

Before following these directions you will need to fill an index card with sentence #, # of words, first 2 words, and punctuation.

You will need 7 different colors: purple, red, blue, green, black, orange, and yellow.

Directions:

Blue & Orange: Using these two colors, underline every sentence in your story, alternating the colors… blue, orange, blue, orange, and so on. This shows sentence length.

Purple: Place a bracket [ ] around the first 2 words of every sentence. Look at the bracketed words. Try to avoid repetition of first words. If a word begins a sentence two or more times in one paragraph- change it!

Red: Circle all “to be” verbs (am, is, was, were, are, be, being, been, and contractions such as isn’t, aren’t, weren’t, etc). Eliminate half of these. You will be changing sentences from passive to active voice: “He was angry” to “He yelled and screamed at everyone in the room.”

Green: Place a  around all basic words and words that are no longer with us- R.I.P. boring words. Such as really, like, a lot, stuff, thing, big, small, sad, fast, good, bad, etc.

Black: Place a triangle around the word “it.”

Yellow: Place a wavy line under repeated words- even if they are STELLAR words!