3 Comma Splices and How to Repair Them

3 Comma Splices and How to Repair Them 3 Comma Splices and How to Repair Them 3 Comma Splices and How to Repair Them By Mark Nichol A comma often serves to link two independent clauses, but it does so in partnership with a conjunction (as shown in this sentence). When a pair of independent clauses butt up against each other with a comma but no conjunction, the grammatical infraction is known as a comma splice- the name refers to the writer’s effort to splice the clauses together with a comma, which is the wrong use of the tool. Which tool is the correct one? Several are available in your writer’s toolbox: The semicolon (a supercomma of sorts) is usually the best choice, but depending on the interrelationship of the clauses, you could, alternatively, employ a period (creating two distinct sentences) or even a dash (showing an abrupt break in thought). Here are three sentences containing a comma splice and their revisions. 1. â€Å"You can sense the frustration, their morale is down,† Smith said of his colleagues. â€Å"‘You can sense the frustration; their morale is down,’ Smith said of his colleagues† is the technically correct solution, but a semicolon is overly formal for a quotation. In this case, use the more casual dash: â€Å"‘You can sense the frustration- their morale is down,’ Smith said of his colleagues.† Another option is to break the statement into two sentences; but insert the attribution between them: â€Å"‘You can sense the frustration,’ Smith said of his colleagues. ‘Their morale is down.’† (Do not use a semicolon or a dash after an attribution.) 2. The devices themselves don’t use logarithms, rather they are tools to reduce multiplication and division of natural numbers to simple addition and subtraction operations. A transitional word such as rather between two independent clauses is a clear signal that a stronger punctuation mark than a comma is required, because one should follow the word, and a stronger punctuation mark should set the clauses off from each other. A semicolon will suffice: â€Å"The devices themselves don’t use logarithms; rather, they are tools to reduce multiplication and division of natural numbers to simple addition and subtraction operations.† (Rather can also begin a separate sentence, but the second clause is so closely related to the first that a semicolon seems more suitable.) 3. The frame was finished two years later- a little behind schedule, the structure was supposed to open in 1989. The inclusion of a dash in this sentence complicates it, because it introduces confusion about which phrase deserves the most emphasis. A simple solution is to demote the â€Å"Hey, look at me!† dash to a more workmanlike comma and use a semicolon to tack on the final phrase as an independent clause: â€Å"The frame was finished two years later, a little behind schedule; the structure was supposed to open in 1989.† One could use a dash in place of the semicolon, but the information that follows isn’t surprising enough to merit the attention-seeking punctuation mark. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Synonyms for â€Å"Leader†Proved vs. Proven20 Movies Based on Shakespeare Plays

Beware these Dangerous E-Z Pass Scams

Beware these Dangerous E-Z Pass Scams Want to jump on the fast lane to becoming an identity theft victim? Simple! Just fall for the dangerous and tricky E-Z Pass email phishing scam. The E-Z Pass system  automatic toll collection system  allows subscribers to avoid having to stop at crowded highway toll plazas. Once the driver has set up an E-Z Pass prepaid account, they receive a small electronic transponder that attaches to the inside of the windshield of their vehicle. When they travel thru a toll facility where E-Z Pass is accepted, an antenna at the toll plaza reads their transponder and automatically debits their account the appropriate amount for the toll. E-Z Pass is currently available in 17 states, with over 35 million E‑Z Pass devices in circulation.   According to the Federal Trade Commission, potential victims targeted by this scam get an email appearing to be from their state E-Z Pass toll road agency. The email will have a realistic E-Z Pass logo and will use pretty threatening language to informing you that you owe money for driving on a toll road without paying or using E-Z Pass. The email also contains the â€Å"hook† in the form of a link to a website where you can view your supposed invoice and take care of your supposed fine without fear of further legal action against you. The scam email is not from the real E-Z Pass Group, an association of toll agencies in 17 states that manages the popular E-Z Pass program. While the E-Z Pass system  operates in only 17  states, and your state may not even have any toll roads, you may still be targeted by the E-Z Pass scam, because  the scam emails are being sent to consumers nationwide. The Worst That Can Happen If you click on the link given in the email, the scumbags running the scam will try to put malware on your computer. And if you give the fake E-Z Pass website any of your personal information, they will almost certainly use it to steal your identity. Goodbye money, credit rating, and personal security. How to Protect Yourself from the Scam The FTC recommends that if you get the E-Z Pass email, do not click on any links in the message or try to reply to it. If you think the email may really be from E-Z Pass or if you think you might actually owe a toll road payment, contact E-Z Pass customer service to confirm that it is really from them. The E-Z Pass email is only one of a seemingly endless list of similar phishing scams, in which scammers pose as legitimate businesses in an attempt to steal consumers’ personal information. To help stay safe from these dangerous scams, the FTC advises: Never click on any links in emails unless you are certain you know or do business with the sender.Never reply to any emails that ask for personal or financial information. Even if the sender is legitimate, email is not a secure way to send such information. In fact, it is never a good idea to include things like your Social Security number or bank account information in any email message, including those you send.Always keep your computer security software current and active. How to Turn the Scammers In If you think you might have gotten a phishing scam email or be a victim of one, you can: Forward the suspect email to spamuce.gov and to the company impersonated in the email.File an official complaint with the Federal Trade Commission’s online FTC Complain Assistant. The E-Z Pass Transponder Theft Scam Another dangerous E-Z Pass scam has nothing to do with email. In this simple act of costly mayhem, thieves find cars and trucks that have been left unlocked so they do not have to break in. Once inside the vehicle, the thief simply steals the victim’s E-Z Pass device and replaces it with a non-operating fake one. In a matter of seconds, the crime that can cost the victim for months, or at least until they figure it out. In 2016, one stolen EZ Pass transponder in Pennsylvania racked up more than $11,000 in fraudulent charges before its real owner discovered the crime. As police advise, avoiding the E-Z Pass transponder theft scam is simple: Lock your car or truck.

Degree Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Degree Plan - Essay Example With my current military experience, I have confidence in my ability to remain focused therefore allowing me to accomplish these two long-term goals Concentration I believe the concentration of courses that that I have selected constitute a well-focused, in-depth program that will grant me the ability to perform well in my desired career goal. I started my studies at Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC), and focused on criminal justice related courses such as Ethics in Criminal Justice, Juvenile Delinquency, and Introduction to Criminal Justice. These courses were introductory level components that have prepared me for more advanced courses at Empire State College. These courses increased my knowledge within the criminal justice field, and they also fit the degree program similar to MVCC. The courses that I selected at Empire State focus primarily on social science related subjects. They include a broad range of subjects within this field which will make me a well-rounded individua l. I have focused heavily on advanced-level courses not only to meet Empire State advanced standards, but to increase my knowledge extensively within the field of criminal justice. The course that I have chosen in my degree program that focuses heavily on terrorism is Terrorism and Homeland. This study will offer me the in-depth focus on terrorism by examining the roles of law enforcement in managing terrorist events. It will also familiarize me with history, politics, and policies of terrorism. Having a subject in terrorism will benefit me if I look into a Homeland Security field as a career goal. In addition, I selected a class on deviant behavior, and it will allow me to explore socially deviant behavior of adults, and youth. General Learning and General Educational Requirements In every degree program, I believe a breadth of learning is necessary in order to become a well-educated individual, instead of being narrow-minded towards education. In my criminal justice program, I fin d it to be extremely important to have the required liberal arts classes to understand the complex nature of the world around me. Throughout life an individual is met with tasks on a daily basis that require a broad-range of learning, and having a variety of liberal arts courses can provide that. For example, when I traveled to many countries and saw ancient buildings, I was unaware of the architectural features these buildings had. I took a class called Western Architecture, and it provided me with the knowledge to understand these magnificent architectural masterpieces. Without this course I would have simply looked past the design aspects. Many of the courses that I have taken, and the ones I selected to develop my degree plan provide me the opportunity to enhance my knowledge and skills in writing, math, history, science, art, and language. During my service in the military I have gained a great deal of knowledge that correlates with some educational aspects at Empire State Coll ege. These courses include Physical Education, Military Science, Ethics, First Aid and Safety, and Principles of Leadership. All of the skills gained from these courses will enable me to become a more productive individual with my desired career choice. Not only does my military education bring breadth into

Pelvic Floor Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Pelvic Floor - Literature review Example This study shall discuss the importance of pelvic floor exercises for the antenatal mother. It shall consider literature on this topic on the benefits of pelvic floor exercises. It shall also discuss possible recommendations for the use of pelvic floor exercises in the future practice. This study is being carried out in order to establish a clear and comprehensive understanding of the current subject matter. Discussion In a paper by Reilly, et.al., (2003) the authors set out to establish whether the supervised pelvic floor exercises during the prenatal period would decrease postpartum stress incontinence in primigravida mothers with bladder neck mobility. Their study was carried out as a single blind and randomized controlled trial in the prenatal clinic in a UK NHS Trust Hospital. It covered about 260 primigravida mothers seeking prenatal care in the clinic at about 20 weeks gestation with bladder neck mobility (Reilly, et.al., 2003). The study called for the respondents to attend s upervised pelvic floor exercises as assisted by a physiotherapist on a monthly basis from 20 weeks of pregnancy. The control group did not undergo any pelvic floor exercises. The study revealed that, as compared to the control group, less postpartum stress incontinence was reported by women who underwent supervised pelvic floor exercises. ... In another study Morkved and colleagues (2003) set forth that urinary incontinence is a major health issue which often decreases the quality of people’s lives. Risk factors for this condition include pregnancy and vaginal delivery. Their study set out to establish whether intensive pelvic floor muscle training during pregnancy could prevent urinary incontinence. The authors carried out their study as a single-blind randomized controlled trial at the Trondheim University Hospital with about 300 nulliparous women who were assigned to undergo either pelvic floor exercises muscle training program or no pelvic floor training at all (Morkved, et.al., 2003). The study revealed that there were fewer women in the training group who experienced urinary incontinence at 36 weeks of pregnancy and 3 months after their delivery. The study established that the intensive pelvic floor exercises assisted in preventing urinary incontinence among women during and after pregnancy. In a study by Oli veira, et.al., (2007) the authors set out to assess the impact of pelvic floor muscle training among 46 pregnant women. The authors divided the women into 2 groups, the exercise and the control group. The assessment of the pelvic floor muscle was carried out through the digital vaginal palpation via the strength scale. The study revealed that the pelvic muscle strength became stronger for women in both groups during the pregnancy period; however it proved to be stronger among women in the exercise group (Oliveira, et.al., 2007). The authors concluded that through pelvic muscle floor training, an increase in the pelvic floor muscle pressure and strength at pregnancy was made possible. This is an important development for pregnant women because stronger pelvic muscles help ease the delivery

Consequences of Nick Carraway as Narrator of F. Scott Fitzgeralds The

The Importance of Nick Carraway as Narrator of The Great Gatsby    In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald critiques the disillusionment of the American Dream by contrasting the corruption of those who adopt a superficial lifestyle with the honesty of Nick Carraway. As Carraway familiarizes himself with the lives of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and Jay Gatsby, he realizes the false seductiveness of the New York lifestyle and regains respect for the Midwest he left behind. "Fitzgerald needs an objective narrator to convey and prove this criticism, and uses Carraway not only as the point of view character, but also as a counter example to the immorality and dishonesty Carraway finds in New York" (Bewley 31). Fitzgerald must construct this narrator as reliable. Due to the nature of the novel, the reader would not believe the story if it were told from the perspective of any other character. Fitzgerald cannot expect the reader to believe what the immoral and careless characters have to say, and he spends so much time establishing them as such. Thus, Car raway is deemed narrator and the reader trusts him. As the practical character in the novel, Carraway is not rash; he is not swayed by the greed and alcohol as some other members of East and West Egg society are. He proclaims, "I have been drunk just twice in my life" (Fitzgerald 33). Fitzgerald constructs Carraway as a follower, not a man of action. He observes Gatsby's parties, never fully experiencing them. He observes the moment before the kiss between the starlet and her director, although Fitzgerald never details the physicality of his relationship with Baker. He observes the affair between Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, but he never confronts Tom Buchanan, nor does he e... ...y to tell the story, but also to critique the mass disillusionment with the American Dream. Carraway's honesty makes him ideal to represent all that the Buchanans lack and legitimizes his admiration of Gatsby. No reader would consider the full impact of Fitzgerald's themes had less attention been given to the creation and execution of the character of Carraway. Works Cited and Consulted: Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fizgerald's Criticism of America." Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes. New York: Pantheon, 1994. Raleigh, John Henry. "F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Trilling 99-103. Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.

Full Text Search in Ruby

Full text search is a technique for searching a document or database stored in the computer. A full text search engine examines all the words, in every stored document, to find a match of the keyword searched by the user. Many web sites and application programs provide full-text search capabilities. There are quite a few choices when it comes to adding a full text search in a Ruby on Rails application. A choice can be made on the basis of the language the search engine is written in or the scalability options suited for the application.Acts As Indexed being a pure Ruby implementation makes for a tool that is totally portable, and suitable for almost any application requiring full text search capabilities. Search queries support many standard boolean operators, namely exclusion of a term through the use of ’-’ and the matching of phrases through the use of quotation marks. It is useful in case of a simple site and need to implement a basic search very quickly. Ferret is a full text search engine library written for ruby implemented in a rails application by the Acts As Ferret plugin.It is inspired by the Apache Lucene Java project. The first step to implementing a search is to get an index built and then the index is searched for the documents having the keyword. One of the more useful features especially in a web scenario is highlighting the matched words. This is made trivial by Index’s highlight method. It’s also possible to use Ferret as a more general purpose data store Xapian is written in C++ with bindings to allow use from Perl, Python, PHP, Java, Tcl, C# and Ruby.An important feature of Xapian is the Ranked probabilistic search – important words get more weight than unimportant words so more relevant results appear at the top. It also supports Synonyms as an automatic form of query expansion and can even suggest spelling corrections for user supplied queries. Full range of structured boolean search operators (â€Å"st ock NOT market†, etc). Sphinx, written in C++, is the most logical successor to Ultrasphinx, since both utilize Sphinx as the search server.Sphinx works by reading information out of the database to build the search index. Communication with the Sphinx server occurs by sharing C â€Å"objects† over sockets. A variety of text processing features enable fine-tuning Sphinx for application requirements, and a number of relevance functions ensures you can tweak search quality as well. Sunspot is a Ruby library for expressive, powerful interaction with the Solr search engine. Sunspot uses Solr, a Java search server built on the Lucene search library.It provides robust, flexible full-text search with no boolean queries and no string programming. Solr servers can be clustered and since they manage the index, Sunspot can automatically update the indexes when the model objects change. There’s no need to run a cron job to reindex the data or setup delta indexing like with S phinx. Thus we see that Full text search has come a long way since the early days of Ferret. The incompatibility of Ultrasphinx, once the most preferred, with Rails 3. resulted in the emergence of Sphinx and Sunspot as favourites. Solr is a compelling alternative to Sphinx, since the most scalable Web apps (Facebook, Twitter) use Java behind the UI layer. Xapian can be considered as the best option whenever ranked probabilistic search is required. Acts_As_Indexed, written entirely in Ruby, works out great and is very easy to implement with automatic indexing. (ie No cron jobs needed to keep the index up to date).

The Decline of Feudalism - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 690 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/02/15 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Feudalism Essay Did you like this example? The decline of feudalism is an aspect that is attributed to different factors. The elements are considered one of the significant issues that contributed to the rise of the modern world. The establishment of the existing social order is one of the features that have been employed in dealing with the required aspects that have been instrumental in defining the current world. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Decline of Feudalism" essay for you Create order The period of the crisis is attributed to the elements that have been employed towards addressing the crises that have developed in the long-term. The paper examines the different crises that have been instrumental in undermining the feudal system. The feudal orders are considered to have been concentrated on the accidental disintegration that has been thought to lead to unnecessary conflicts among the different classes. The fall of the feudal system is considered to have affected the social economic and political order that is being witnessed in the current world. The general crisis is, therefore, one of the critical factors that have led to the rise of the communal aspects that has been the cornerstone of the issues related to the fundamental foundations. The identified inherent weaknesses have been instrumental in determining the unique factors that led to the current crises and expressions. The fall of feudalism is considered one of the significant issues that have been developed with the aim of looking into the unique factors that have defined the European populations. The end of the perceived mediocrity and stagnation among the populace is one of the critical aspects used to determine the changes that led to the ultimate purpose of feudalism. The subsequent period after the 14th century played a vital role in defining the changes that occurred in society (Glassman 1698). The decay of the medieval society is also one of the critical factors that have led to the fast-changing aspects of growth and depression. The particular civilization was undermined by the intellectual doubts that were rising at an incredible rate. The weakening social and moral rot that was characteristic of the civilized societies that eroded the political foundation. The general picture was seen even though the disentangled perspectives were reduced substantially. The obscurity associated with the perceived image that was used to define the system of feudalism was poisoned by the demographic concerns that existed. The increased population in the periods before the 12thand the 13th century provided the perfect ground for the development of feudalism (Castles 10). The emergence of Black Death at the beginning of the 14th century was critical in initiating the decline. Significant sectors of the economy such as agriculture were significantly affected. The lad was particularly touched, and cultivation could not occur anymore. The decline led to the fall of the ruling class that was unable to withstand the changing prospects. A focus on the verdict class depicted inability to exert their control on the people making it difficult for the people to understand the differences that appeared in the system. The aspect led to the fall in the profits making it difficult for them to exert their control on the working class (Castles 7). The contraction of the seigneurial revenues meant that the feudal system was soon going to diminish its capabilities on the people. The aspect was characterized by the fall of the market for imported goods that were the key drivers of the European industries. One of the most affected was the textile industry that was later attributed to political causes. The tendency for the diminishing prospects was thus a significant contributor to the market drivers that were substantial issues in the lives of the people. In conclusion, the stagnation is perceived to have been a long grown fruit of the feudal system, and the people could not change it. The risk of error associated with the system led to the emergence of the associated innovations that were attributed to the crucial issues that were associated with the development processes. The advent of the social conflicts was one of the great pointers to the items that needed to be treated with the concerted effort to drive the reliable processes on the different aspects of political, social and economic problems.