1. Fun. [10 min.] "Test of the Emergency Grammar System."

2. Nit-pick. [24 min.] National Punctuation Day

3. Exercises [2-3 hours] Just these in this order:

83. Comma Usage [This exercise doesn't eat serial commas.]
85. Punctuation [This exercise uses semi-colons to repair comma splices. Journalists
often separate related sentences into two sentences with a period and capital letter.]

94. Compound Nouns [Move to the next response with "tab."]   [ compound modifiers]
[Journalism deviates from this exercise's answers for these two items:
vice president and a coal-black sky. "Rat race" is a noun phrase.]

78. Modifier Placement   [ placement   First click on the quiz number for details.]
118. Parallel Structures   [ series   First click on the quiz number for details.]
Try other quizzes, such as 93. Basic Mechanics and 118. Parallelism III.

Go to the quiz list at Guide to Grammar and Writing (Capital Community College,
Hartford, Conn.).

4. Ready? [20 min.]

[The plural apostrophe does not exist: Maria Veridad, the Veridads (pl.).]
[No apostrophe for ABCs.  Pronunciation apostrophe for single letter A’s.]
[Macy’s (store). Walgreens (singular possessive apostrophe dropped by the company.)]
[Lands' End grammatically should be Land's End (the end of the land), a boating term.]

    A-or-B Grammar Quiz (NIU).

5. Stylebook exercises. [20 min.] Short AP Style Practice..

A giant collection of exercises at newsroom101.com

6. More Practice. [?? min.] Practice Your AP Style.

7. Honor answer key. [15 min.] A-or-B Stylebook quiz.

8. Ready? [15 min.] Stylebook Exam (Northern Illinois University).

   Newswriting QuickGuide: a journalism handbook.

NewsPlace.org [N.E.W.S., Sources, Tools, WhiteHouse '08]: since 1996

  Professor Avi Bass (abass@niu.edu), Northern Illinois University.