Okeydokey, my background is editing copy for public consumption My take on your queries are below. Grammar wasn't a strong point of mine at school but I got it worked out after 13 years in newspapers .

See what you reckon, anyway.


The deliberate use of metaphors, emotive language, rhetorical questions and punctuation work together to illustrate the depths to which the teacher has sunk, and to highlight the hopelessness which he feels. <- should the words in red be as they are, or should they be all plural or all singular?

All are ok as plural - providing you don't have a mix of singular and plural is ok. Should be one or the other in this instance.

Metaphors are the most significant literary technique used by Lawrence. - should metaphors be singular? Or should 'technique' become plural?

I think in this case it should be Metaphor is ... however, for the purpose of clarity could you say "Lawrence used metaphors to blah blah blah." For my mind, a metaphor isn't a technique - it's a grouping of words. Make sense?



Dark words such as ‘waste’ ‘abyss’ and ‘consume’ can be associated with depression, which support the teacher’s view that there is no purpose to either his teaching, or his students’ learning, and how he feels about teaching itself. <- Should that comma in red be there, or is the sentence just too long either way?

First thought is the sentence is too long ... sorry. However, it's been years since I've been at uni and uni lecturers are different to newspaper readers LOL. The main thing I'd suggest is put a comma after "waste", ... and no need for the red comma.

An example of this would be having the students physically portrayed as the ‘unruly hounds’ which the teacher describes them as in the original text instead of children, and have them sitting at their desks, straining against their leashes and scratching at the floor with their feet, while their leashes are held by the teacher as he sits as his desk. <- clearly this sentence is too long. Would it be acceptable to have bracket around this sentence 'which the teacher describes them as in the original text instead of children' or not? or just leave it out altogether?


Leave it out - from memory words inside a bracket or hyphon are accepted as superflous words and can be deleted without affecting the context of the copy. Given the sentence is long, I'd say delete.