Skip to main content

Improprieties

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.



Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.


Summary:

This resource covers using logic within writing—logical vocabulary, logical fallacies, and other types of logos-based reasoning.

A functional impropriety is the use of a word as the wrong part of speech. The wrong meaning for a word can also be an impropriety. For example, in this sentence, the impropriety is "trying":

When writing papers, we trying to start early and revise often.

Correct version:

When writing papers, we try to start early and revise often.

Here is another example:

This tale works as initiative story about a young girl who grows into a more mature adolescent.

Correct version:

This tale works as an initiation story about a young girl who grows into a more mature adolescent.

To help you practice avoiding improprieties, complete the exercise below.

Mark improprieties in the following phrases and correct them. If you find none, write C for "correct" next to the phrase.

Example: (occupation) hazards — occupational

  1. reforming institution policies
  2. percent aging students by grades
  3. dead trees as inhabitants for birds
  4. an initiate story about a young girl
  5. a recurrence theme in literature
  6. a wood chisel
  7. a wood baseball bat
  8. a frivolity conversation on the weather
  9. a utopia hideaway of alpine villas
  10. a utilize room complete with workbench
  11. the unstable chemical compounds
  12. the unschooled labor force
  13. the vandals who rapined Rome
  14. an erupting volcano crevassing the hills
  15. criticism writing which is often abstract
  16. abstracted beyond understanding
  17. classified as an absorbent
  18. a handwriting letter
  19. banjoed their way to the top ten
  20. a meander stream
  21. hoboing across the country
  22. holidayed the time away
  23. the redirective coming from the officer
  24. grain-fed slaughter cattle
  25. ivy tendoned to the walls