English grammar for dummies

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Bibliographic Information

English grammar for dummies

by Geraldine Woods

（--For dummies）

Wiley, c2017

3rd ed

  • : pbk

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"Learning made easy"--Cover

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Get the last word on English grammar Grasping the intricacies of the English language doesn't need to be tricky, and this down-to-earth guide breaks everything down in ways that make sense-Revealing rules, tips, and tricks to eliminate confusion and gain clarity, English Grammar For Dummies gives you everything you need to communicate with confidence! Good grammar lays the foundation for speaking and writing clearly. This easy-to-follow book will help you become a more articulate, effective communicator. Covering everything from the building blocks of a sentence to those pesky rules of punctuation, it offers the practical guidance you need to communicate in a way that would make any English teacher proud. Improve your speaking skills Clearly compose written communications Get the latest techniques for continuous improvement Write a winning college entrance exam or compelling business presentation Stop worrying about the grammar police and become more confident with your words!

Table of Contents

Introduction 1 Foolish Assumptions 1 Icons Used in This Book 2 Beyond the Book 3 Where to Go from Here 3 Part 1: Building a Firm Foundation: The Parts of the Sentence 5 Chapter 1: Using the Right Words at the Right Time 7 What This Year's Sentence Is Wearing: Understanding Grammar and Style 8 Distinguishing Between the Three Englishes 9 Wanna get something to eat? Friendspeak 10 Do you feel like getting a sandwich? Conversational English 11 Will you accompany me to the dining room? Formal English 12 Thumbing Your Way to Better Grammar 13 Probing the Limits of Grammar-Checking Software 14 What's Your Problem? Solutions to Your Grammar Gremlins 15 Chapter 2: Verbs: The Heart of the Sentence 17 Expressing Meaning with Verbs 17 Meeting the Families: Linking and Action Verbs 18 Linking verbs: The Giant Equal Sign 19 Forms of "to be" 19 Synonyms of "to be" 20 Savoring sensory verbs 21 Completing linking-verb sentences correctly 22 Lights! Camera! Action verb! 24 Calling the Help Line for Verbs 25 Timing is everything: Creating a time frame with helping verbs 25 Don't ask! Questions and negative statements 25 Adding shades of meaning with helping verbs 27 Pop the Question: Locating the Verb 29 Chapter 3: Who's Doing What? How to Find the Subject 33 Who's Driving the Truck? Why the Subject Is Important 33 Teaming up: Subject and verb pairs 34 Compound subjects and verbs: Two for the price of one 34 Pop the Question: Locating the Subject-Verb Pairs 35 What's a Nice Subject Like You Doing in a Place Like This? Unusual Word Order 37 Find That Subject! Detecting You-Understood 39 Searching for the Subject in Questions 40 Don't Get Faked Out: Avoiding Fake Verbs and Subjects 40 Finding fake verbs 41 Watching out for "here" and "there" and other fake subjects 41 Choosing the correct verb for "here" and "there" sentences 42 Subjects Aren't Just a Singular Sensation: Forming the Plural of Nouns 42 Regular plurals 43 The -IES and -YS have it 43 No knifes here: Irregular plurals 44 The brother-in-law rule: Hyphenated plurals 45 Chapter 4: When All Is Said and Done: Complete Sentences 47 Completing Sentences: The Essential Subjects and Verbs 48 Complete Thoughts, Complete Sentences 50 Joining Forces: Combining Sentences Correctly 53 Connecting with coordinate conjunctions 53 Attaching thoughts: Semicolons 55 Boss and Employee: Joining Ideas of Unequal Ranks 55 Choosing Subordinate Conjunctions 56 Using Pronouns to Combine Sentences 58 Understanding Fragments 59 Placing fragments in the right context 60 Steering clear of inappropriate fragments 61 Reaching the End of the Line: Endmarks 62 Chapter 5: Handling Complements 65 Getting a Piece of the Action: Complements for Action Verbs 66 Receiving the action: Direct objects 66 Rare, but sometimes there: Indirect objects 68 No bias here: Objective complements 69 Completing the Equation: Subject Complements 69 Pop the Question: Locating the Complement 71 Pop the Question: Finding the Indirect Object 72 Pronouns as Objects and Subject Complements 74 Part 2: Clearing Up Confusing Grammar Points 75 Chapter 6: Relax! Understanding Verb Tense 77 Simplifying Matters: The Simple Tenses 78 Present tense 78 Past tense 79 Future tense 80 Using the Simple Tenses Correctly 82 Present and present progressive 82 Past and past progressive 82 Future and future progressive 83 Not Picture Perfect: Understanding the Perfect Tenses 84 Present perfect and present perfect progressive 84 Past perfect and past perfect progressive 85 Future perfect and future perfect progressive 86 Using the Perfect Tenses Correctly 88 Case 1: Beginning in the past and continuing in the present 88 Case 2: Events at two different times in the past 89 Case 3: More than two past events, all at different times 90 Case 4: Two events in the future 92 Reporting Information: Verbs Tell the Story 93 Summarized speech 93 Eternal truths 95 The historical present 95 The Rebels: Dealing with Irregular Verbs 96 To be, to have, to do 96 Irregular past forms and participles 99 Chapter 7: Nodding Your Head: All About Agreement 103 Agreeing Not to Disagree 103 Making Subjects and Verbs Agree 104 The unchangeables 104 The changeables 105 Matching Subjects and Verbs in Some Tricky Situations 108 Compound subjects 108 Locating subjects and ignoring distractions 109 Reaching an Agreement with Pronouns 110 Choosing subject pronouns 111 Matching pronouns to their antecedents 112 Agreeing in Tricky Situations 114 Five puzzling pronouns 115 Each and every 116 Either and neither: Alone or with partners 116 Politics and other irregular subjects 118 The ones, the things, and the bodies 119 Who, which, and that 120 Dealing Sensitively with Pronoun Gender 121 Chapter 8: Pronouns and Their Cases 125 Me Like Tarzan: Choosing Subject Pronouns 125 Compounding interest: Pairs of subjects 126 Attracting appositives 128 Picking pronouns for comparisons 129 Using Pronouns as Direct and Indirect Objects 130 Are You Talking to I? Prepositions and Pronouns 131 Attaching Objects to Verbals 133 Knowing the Difference Between Who and Whom 134 Pronouns of Possession: No Exorcist Needed 136 Dealing with Pronouns and "-Ing" Nouns 137 Chapter 9: Small Words, Big Trouble: Prepositions 139 Proposing Relationships: Prepositions 139 The Objects of My Affection: Prepositional Phrases and Their Objects 140 Pop the question: Questions that identify the objects of the prepositions 142 Why pay attention to prepositions? 143 A Good Part of Speech to End a Sentence With? 144 Chapter 10: Two Real Really Good Parts of Speech: Adjectives and Adverbs 147 Clarifying Meaning with Descriptions 147 Adding Adjectives 148 Adjectives describing nouns 149 Adjectives describing pronouns 149 Attaching adjectives to linking verbs 150 Articles: Not just for magazines 150 Pop the question: Identifying adjectives 151 Stalking the Common Adverb 153 Pop the question: Finding the adverb 153 Adverbs describing adjectives and other adverbs 155 Choosing Between Adjectives and Adverbs 156 Sorting out "good" and "well" 157 Dealing with "bad" and "badly" 158 Adjectives and adverbs that look the same 159 Creating Comparisons with Adjectives and Adverbs 160 Ending it with -er or giving it more to adjectives 160 Creating comparisons with adverbs 163 Breaking the Rules: Irregular Comparisons 164 Good, bad, well 164 Little, many, much 165 Part 3: Conventional Wisdom: Punctuation and Capitalization 167 Chapter 11: Punctuation Law That Should Be Repealed: Apostrophes 169 The Pen of My Aunt or My Aunt's Pen? Using Apostrophes to Show Possession 170 Ownership for singles 170 Sharing the wealth: Plural possessives 171 Possession with Proper Nouns 174 Ownership with Hyphenated Words 175 Possessive Nouns That End in S 176 Common Apostrophe Errors with Pronouns 177 Shortened Words for Busy People: Contractions 179 You Coulda Made a Contraction Mistake 180 Chapter 12: Quotations: More Rules Than the Internal Revenue Service 183 And I Quote 184 Punctuating Quotations 185 Quotations with speaker tags 185 Quotations without speaker tags 189 Quotations with question marks 190 Quotations with exclamation points 191 Quotations with semicolons 192 Quotations inside quotations 192 Who Said That? Identifying Speaker Changes 194 Germ-Free Quotations: Using Sanitizing Quotation Marks 195 Punctuating Titles: When to Use Quotation Marks 196 Chapter 13: The Pause That Refreshes: Commas 199 Distinguishing Items: Commas in Series 200 Using "Comma Sense" to Add Information to Your Sentence 202 Separating a list of descriptions 202 Essential or extra? Commas tell the tale 204 Commas with appositive influence 207 You Talkin' to Me? Direct Address 208 Using Commas in Addresses and Dates 209 Addressing addresses 209 Punctuating dates 211 Getting Started: The Introductory Comma 212 Words not connected to the meaning of the sentence 212 Phrases and clauses 212 Punctuating Independently 213 Chapter 14: Useful Little Marks: Dashes, Hyphens, and Colons 215 Inserting Information with Dashes 215 Long dashes 216 Short dashes 216 H-y-p-h-e-n-a-t-i-n-g Made Easy 217 Understanding the great divide 217 Using hyphens for compound words 218 Placing hyphens in numbers 219 Utilizing the well-placed hyphen 220 Creating a Stopping Point: Colons 220 Addressing a business letter or email 220 Introducing lists 221 Introducing long quotations 222 Chapter 15: CAPITAL LETTERS 225 Knowing What's Up with Uppercase 225 Capitalizing (or Not) References to People 227 Sorting out titles 227 Writing about family relationships 228 Tackling race and ethnicity 230 Capitalizing Geography: Directions, Places, and Languages 230 Directions and areas of a country 231 Capitalizing geographic features 231 Marking Seasons and Other Times 232 Schooling: Courses, Years, and Subjects 232 Writing Capitals in Titles 233 Headline style 233 Sentence style 235 Concerning Historic Capitals: Events and Eras 235 ?4U: Cn U AbbreV8? 236 Chapter 16: Rules of Thumb: Adapting Grammar to Electronic Media 239 Thumb Wrestling with Grammar: Texts, Tweets, and Instant Messages 240 Choosing formal or informal language 240 Getting creative within character limits 243 Making a text and checking it twice 245 Emailing Your Way to Good Grammar 246 The heading 246 The greeting 247 The body 247 The closing 248 Handling Grammar on the Internet 248 Blogging for fun and (sometimes) profit 248 Navigating social networks 249 PowerPoint to the People 250 Writing titles 251 Biting the bulleted list 252 Part 4: Polishing Without Wax: The Finer Points of Grammar and Style 255 Chapter 17: Fine-Tuning Verbs 257 Giving Voice to Verbs 257 Actively Seeking a Better Voice 258 Getting Your Verbs in the Proper Mood 260 Stating the facts: Indicative 261 Commanding your attention: Imperative 261 Discovering the possibilities: Subjunctive 262 Using subjunctives with "were" 262 Forming subjunctives with "had" 264 Adding Meaning with Strong Verbs 265 "There is" a problem with boring verbs 265 Does your writing "have" a problem? 265 Don't just "say" and "walk" away 266 Chapter 18: No Santas but Plenty of Clauses 269 Understanding the Basics of Clause and Effect 269 Getting the goods on subordinate and independent clauses 271 Knowing the three legal jobs for subordinate clauses 273 Untangling subordinate and independent clauses 275 Deciding when to untangle clauses 276 Putting your subordinate clauses in the right place 278 Choosing content for your subordinate clauses 279 Chapter 19: Spicing Up Sentence Patterns 281 Getting Verbal 281 Appreciating gerunds 282 Working with infinitives 283 Participating with a participle 284 Choosing the Correct Tense 286 Simultaneous events 286 Different times 287 Sprucing Up Boring Sentences with Clauses and Verbals 289 The clause that refreshes 290 Verbally speaking 291 Mixing It Up: Changing Sentence Patterns 292 Scrambling word order 293 Going long or cutting it short 293 Chapter 20: Staying on Track: Parallelism 295 Constructing Balanced Sentences 295 Shifting Grammar into Gear: Avoiding Stalled Sentences 299 Steering clear of a tense situation 299 Keeping your voice steady 301 Knowing the right person 303 Seeing Double: Conjunction Pairs 305 Avoiding Lopsided Comparisons 308 Chapter 21: Meaning What You Say: Clarity 311 On Location: Placing Descriptions Correctly 311 Misplaced descriptions 312 Just hanging out: Danglers 314 Avoiding confusing descriptions 317 Finding the Subject When Words Are Missing from the Sentence 318 Comparatively Speaking: Incomplete and Illogical Comparisons 320 Missing and presumed wrong 320 Illogical comparisons 322 Steering Clear of Vague Pronouns 326 Matching pronouns to antecedents 326 One pronoun, one idea 327 Chapter 22: Grammar Devils 331 Deleting Double Negatives 331 Scoring D Minus 334 Distinguishing Between Word Twins and Triplets 335 Three terrible twos 335 Goldilocks and the three there's 335 Your and you're: A problem 336 The owl rule: Who's, whose 336 It's an its problem 336 Close, But Not Close Enough: Words That Resemble Each Other 337 Continually (continuously?) making mistakes 337 Are you affected? Or effected? Do you sit or set? 338 Woulda, coulda, shoulda 339 You gotta problem with grammar? 340 Accepting the difference 340 Hanged or hung up on grammar 341 The farther or further of our country 341 Roaming Descriptions 342 Placing "even" 342 Placing "almost" and "nearly" 343 Placing "only" and "just" 343 Pairs of Trouble: Complicated Verbs 344 Rise and raise 344 Lie and lay 345 Lose and loose 346 Two Not for the Price of One 346 Four for the Road: Other Common Errors 347 Me, myself, and I 348 In the group: Between/among 348 Being that I like grammar 349 Try and figure these out: Verbs and infinitives 349 Part 5: The Part of Tens 351 Chapter 23: Ten Ways to Improve Your Proofreading 353 Reread 353 Wait a While 354 Read It Aloud 354 Check the Commas 354 Swap with a Friend 355 Let the Computer Program Help 355 Check the Verbs 355 Check the Pronouns 355 Know Your Typing Style 356 The Usual Suspects 356 Chapter 24: Relax Already! Grammar Rules You Can Stop Worrying About 357 To Not Split an Infinitive 357 A Good Part of Speech to End a Sentence With 358 What Can or May I Do? 358 Formal Greetings in Emails and Texts 358 Addresses and Dates in Electronic Communication 359 Periods and Commas in Some Electronic Messages 359 The Jury Are Out on This Rule 359 That? Who? 360 Who/Whom Is Correct? 360 Hopefully This Rule Has Faded 360 Index 361

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