Hunting for "Common" Structures

Note: The blue links on this page are only pictures. In order to begin a search, click here to return to the Grammar Safari page.

EXAMPLE: Hunting the Past Perfect in a Magazine Article

In this example, we will be looking for instances of the past perfect aspect in articles available through the Electronic Newstand listed on the Safari Page. The same basic principles would apply for any common structure once a text to search has been chosen and is on the screen.
  1. Here is the menu we see after clicking on Electronic Newsstand on the Safari Page. Here we simply click on the name of a magazine we're interested in.

  2. We click either on Archive for a list of past articles or Current Issue for an article from the current edition of the magazine.

    Since we have chosen Archive, we then have to select an article and click on it.

  3. With the article in front of us on the screen, we click on the FIND button at the top of the document.

    We type in what we want to find--in this case had. Since the computer will search for an exact match, we will add a space to the end of it so that the computer does not find examples like shadow If we specifically wanted to find a word at the beginning of a sentence, we would type it with a capital letter and check the box which says CASE SENSITIVE.

  4. Click FIND to begin your search.

  5. When the computer finds had , it will highlight it.

    Notice that in this case, the computer found had as the main verb of a present perfect--not the helping verb of a past perfect aspect. This is not what we are looking for. You can use command-G on the keyboard to check the next example in the text.

  6. The next one is a nice example of the past perfect.

  7. If we want to save it, we use the mouse to highlight it

    and then press command-C on the keyboard to copy it. We can then use command-V to paste it into any open word-processing document we have available (alternatively, you can use copy and paste under the edit menu at the top of the screen).

    (Teacher's note: be sure to include enough context to make it meaningful and also include the title of the source of the example!)

  8. When we are done searching this article, we can use the BACK button at the top of the screen to back up and choose another article or another magazine to search in the same way.

To begin a search, click here to return to the Grammar Safari page.

comments should be emailed to dmills@uiuc.edu