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Local Man Loses Pants, Life. Abstract

→ Abstract
1-2 Introduction, Background
3 Material and Method
4 Results and Discussion
5 Summary and Conclusions
Local Man Loses Pants, Life. Extra text

Abstract

This Bachelor’s thesis is a study of the use of asyndetic coordination in headlines in 12 English-language online newspapers, from the US, the UK, Australia and Canada. More specifically, the feature examined is the use of a comma where one would, in formal writing, expect an and, namely between two phrase-level elements in a list of only two, as in the title of the thesis: Local man loses pants, life. The study is based on a corpus constructed of 513 headlines culled from RSS feeds. The primary finding is that the asyndetic, space-saving “comma form”, as found in the title of the thesis, dominates in the US, Canadian and Australian newspapers, but is almost completely avoided in the UK newspapers (where the title of this thesis would almost certainly have been written Local man loses pants and life).

The findings also suggest that factors such as notions of grammatical markedness and temporal or causal relations may influence the choice of coordination form in those newspapers that use both forms.

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Subjects: Linguistics
Text types: Bachelor thesis

indefinite articles: a / an

The indefinite articles a and an are used to indicate a non-specific thing, or any instance of a thing. Whether to use a or an depends not on spelling, but on the sound of the word that comes immediately after the article. The article a is used before words beginning with a consonant sound, while the article an is used before words beginning with a vowel sound.

Use a before a word that begins with a w-sound or a y-sound, even if the word itself begins with a vowel, like united and one.

Several agencies suspected a one-armed man of the crime, and they made a united effort to catch him.

Use an before a word that begins with a vowel sound, even if the word itself begins with a consonant, like honest.

She gave an honest answer.

Note that the a and an distinction applies to the very next word in the sentence, not to the word that the a or an actually modifies. If the next word is in parentheses, however, the article can ‘match’ the first word after the parentheses.

This line should be read as a, hopefully intriguing, example of an, admittedly unlikely, sentence. (“a” modifies “example”; “an” modifies “sentence”)

Use the indefinite article the first time that a (indefinite) general thing is referred to. (“a” modifies “thing”)

The definite article used before an acronym should also depend on how the acronym would be pronounced out loud.

According to an SVA official… According to a USDA official…

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Abstract

Research papers like articles, theses, and lab reports almost always require an Abstract, which can be thought of as a special type of summary. The Abstract is the first section of such texts (usually no more than 1–2 paragraphs and/or 150–300 words long), and it should summarize the purpose of the study, its method and/or theoretical approach, and its main findings. The Abstract is an independent text that a reader should be able to understand without reading the longer text that it summarizes.

When writing an Abstract, make sure to provide a clear and accurate picture of your study so that the reader can decide whether or not the paper is relevant for her purposes. Remember that the Abstract is in many cases the only part of your text that will be read.

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Acronyms

Acronyms are a type of abbreviation in which the first letters from a phrase or name are taken to stand for the whole phrase or name. Often, an acronym is given in capital letters. Frequently used technical acronyms should be defined the first time they are used.

In 2012, the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) started a national project called Myggjakten in order to collect mosquito DNA.

A small segment of a gene, approximately 400-1000 base pairs (bp), is examined by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced.

Note that in these examples, the boldface is used only to highlight the acronym in the example; acronyms do not need to be highlighted in real texts. Sometimes full stops are used after each letter (such as the U.K. and the U.S.), but using stops is often optional.

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Using am / is / was

Am, is, and was are used with singular subjects. Am is the 1st person present tense; is is the 3rd person present tense; was is the 1st and 3rd-person past tense.

Present: (1st person) I am late. (3rd person) She is late. He is late. It is gone.

Past: (1st person) I was late. (3rd person) She was late. He was late. It was gone.

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Demonstrative adjectives

The demonstrative adjectives are this, that, these, and those, and they are used to emphasize exactly which thing is being referred to. (These words can also be used as pronouns.)

This study will use non-monumental artefacts that bear runic inscriptions. These inscriptions do not necessarily follow the same formulas as displayed on rune stones.

Further research showed those earlier conclusions to be misleading.

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Using is / are

Whether to use is or are depends on whether the subject of the sentence is single or plural. The choice can be confusing when the subject and the noun closest to the verb are not in the same number, as in the following examples.

This category of puzzles is very challenging for humans. (subject is singular, “This category”)

Puzzles falling into this category are very challenging for humans. (subject is plural, “Puzzles”)

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Numerals in the flow of text

Small numbers (less than 20) are usually spelled out, while large numbers are given as a numeral. A small number should be spelled out if it is the first word in a sentence, especially if the value is less than 20, but other numbers may be given as numerals in the same sentence. In general, it is best to avoid starting a sentence with a numeral.

In total, 28 names appear in the material. Thirteen can be categorized as male names and 12 are probably female names. Two transliterated names could belong to either gender.

Note that the word “one” is often used as a pronoun, and in this usage, it must be spelled out and cannot be replaced by a numeral.

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Using that

The relative pronouns that and which are easily confused, and there is no definitive correct usage; furthermore, these words are often used differently in speech. However, the two words are generally not used in an exactly identical fashion in writing. That often refers only to the noun just before the word that, and the word is commonly used to introduce restrictive clauses (see below).

These simple rules yield a puzzle that cannot be solved through trial and error.

The phrase “that cannot be solved through trial and error” is called a restrictive or defining clause, and it adds crucial information about the word “puzzle”. A restrictive clause can not be set off by a comma.

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Definite article: the

The definite article in English is the, for both singular and plural nouns. The definite article points to a specific instance of a thing. For the first instance in which an indefinite or general thing is referred to, an indefinite article is used. The next time that same thing is referred to, the definite article is used, even within the same sentence.

If a game allows a player to perform an action, the player expects to be able to perform the action across the whole game.

[For constructions like “The higher the temperature, the worse the humidity feels” (Swedish “Ju… desto…”), see Correlative pairs: the / the.]

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Using the s-ending for verbs

With a third-person singular subject, the verb takes an –s in the present tense. That is, when the subject is 1) only a single entity that could be replaced by “she,” “he” or “it” and 2) the action takes place in the present, one adds the letter s to the verb.

This new computer runs faster than the old one. It saves time.

Compare to the following sentence with plural subjects, in which the present tense does not take the s ending.

These new computers run faster than the old ones. They save time.

If the main verb is separated from the subject by many words, it can be tricky to pick out which word is the subject. In the following, the subject is “Problems” (plural) and the main verb is “fall” (to agree with the plural subject).

Problems for which there exists a solution algorithm that completes in a time that grows in a polynomial fashion with the problem size fall into the set P.

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Using where

The relative pronoun where is used when a physical location is being referred to. Where is also often used when identifying variables in equations or in figures.

The lab where the element was discovered burned down in 1902.

The relationship between the displacement field, the electric field and the polarization is D = ε0E + P, where ε0 is the electric constant.

Where can also be used to refer to publications, although the phrase “in which” is more formal than where in these cases.

Arwill-Nordbladh wrote a compendium of gender theory in archaeology, where she argues that archaeology is androcentric in numerous ways.

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Local Man Loses Pants, Life. Abstract

Abstract

indefinite articles: a / an

Abstract

Acronyms

Using am / is / was

Demonstrative adjectives

Using is / are

Numerals in the flow of text

Using that

Definite article: the

Using the s-ending for verbs

Using where