Which of the following questions should you ask in order to understand an author's diction?
1) are sentences written using correct and commonly accepted grammar and spelling?
2) do the words have positive, neutral, or negative feelings and ideas associated with them?
3) how does the author support his or her position in each paragraph of the argument?
4) why does the author include these specific statistics, facts, graphs, and images?

The greatest gift the sumerians gave the world was the invention of writing. the sumerians were wealthy people. they needed some way to keep track of what they owned. they began drawing pictures. they used a reed as a pen. they drew on soft pieces of clay. the soft clay was then dried in the sun. the tablet became a permanent record. later, the sumerian drawings changed into wedge-shaped symbols. this kind of writing is called cuneiform. by putting symbols together, the sumerians could write entire sentences.