2014-2015
Required Texts:
1. 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology, 3rd Edition by Samuel Cohen
2. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Please read this document thoroughly and email either Ms. Laura Clark (dhslauraclark@gmail.com) or
Ms. Amy Hudak-Bricker (dhshudak@gmail.com)if you have any questions. Obtain your summer
assignment books immediately, as you may have difficulty finding them at the last minute. Email me by
July 1, 2014 if you cannot purchase or find the books.
* This assignment must be hand-written in detail. Due Date: Friday, August 8th.
**Please note that there are no acceptable excuses for late assignments. Please email your teacher the
assignment if you are absent on the due date.
* Please Note: These are the only summer assignments for AP Lang students. The language arts
department assignments and extra credit opportunities listed for juniors and seniors do not
apply to AP students.
You will need to make enough copies of the SOAPSTone chart to complete this assignment.
If additional copies are needed, please visit one of the following AP Lang websites:
www.aplangclark.blogspot.com
www.aplanghudak.blogspot.com
Subject
Tone
Type of misuse:
________________________________________________________________
2. Imagine youre a shopkeeper in Atlanta, Georgia who deliberately stuck ungrammatical signs in his
window as a ruse to draw people into the shop. Come up with four (4) of your own particularly
humorous or egregious ungrammatical signs that misuse the apostrophe, then rewrite the sign using
the apostrophe correctly.
a.
b.
c.
d.
Exercises to Bring Out Your Inner Stickler: Thatll do, CommaChapter Two
1. Come up with four (4) sentences of your own using the comma. Make sure the meaning of each sentence
is significantly altered by the placement of the comma.
a.
b.
c.
d.
2. Punctuate the following paragraph taken from The New Yorker. Use a bright color to make your
corrections.
Not long ago in Paris I met a young Muslim woman named Djamila Benrehab who at the age of twenty
had donned not only a black head scarf but a billowy black abaya and under it all a tight black bandanna to
her eyebrows that left only the circle of her face exposed. Djamila is a big apple cheeked endearing person.
She speaks a beautiful lilting French and is intelligent and quite charming. Her dream is to leave Paris and
go to Brooklyn where she has heard Muslim girls go veiled and nobody minds and in any case It cant be
worse than here.
3. Punctuate the following sentences. Use a bright color to make your corrections. (For explanations see
page 97.)
a. Leonora walked on her head a little higher than usual.
b. The driver managed to escape from the vehicle before it sank and swam to the riverbank.
c. Dont guess use a timer or a watch.
Exercises to Bring Out Your Inner Stickler: Airs and GracesChapter Three
1. Insert the necessary semicolons and other punctuation in this passage by Jane Austen using modern
punctuation rules. (Austen was very fond of semicolons.) Use a bright color to make your corrections.
Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire was a man who for his own amusement never took up
any book but the Baronetage there he found occupation for an idle hour in consolation in a distressed one
there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by contemplating the limited remnant of the
earliest patents there any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity
and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century and there if every other
leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed
2. Insert the necessary parenthesis, colons, semicolons, commas, and periods in this famous passage by
James Joyce using the punctuation rules youve learned; use a bright color to make your corrections:
There was no hope for him this time it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house it was
vacation time and studied the lighted square of window and night after night I had found it lighted in the
same way faintly and evenly. If he was dead I thought I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened
blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me I am not
long for this world and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true
(Dubliners, 1916)
Exercises to Bring Out Your Inner Stickler: A Little Used Punctuation MarkChapter Five
1. Insert the necessary hyphens. Use a bright color to make your corrections.
Arulpagrasams British manager duct taped a banner reproducing M.I.As spray painted, circular orange
and green logo to the turntables, which were suspended from the ceiling by chains.
(The New Yorker, 2004)
2. Now that you are an expert at using the hyphen, write a passage in which you employ the hyphen in
each of the ten ways described on pages 171-174. Continue your sentences on the back of this page or on
a separate page, if necessary.