The Everything Grammar and Style Book: All You Need to Master the Rules of Great Writing

by Susan Thurman

Overview

Good grammar is as critical to a successful personal and professional life as good grooming. Yet many struggle to master the basics. Enter this straightforward and entertaining book, which will teach even the worst grammarphobes how to write crystal-clear emails, professional-sounding letters, or articulate term papers.

Completely revised and updated, this edition of an Everything bestseller includes:

• Steps to mastering difficult punctuation
• Effective revision techniques
• Tips for clear and concise writing

It also includes new material on:

• Lists of commonly misspelled and misused words
• Brand-new exercises, called Checkpoint, at the end of each chapter
• E-Links: Web sites for spelling rules, style help, and interactive quizzes

The perfect desk reference, The Everything Grammar and Style Book, 2nd Edition has all the ingredients anyone needs to conquer their fear of grammar and become a great communicator.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605502106
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Series:	The Everything Books
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	354
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Susan Thurman has taught English grammar from the junior high school level to the college level. She edits and publishes Class Act, a national magazine that features grammar, writing, and ideas for English teachers, and has written more than fifty articles on English instruction, as well as a number of study guides. She lives in Henderson, Kentucky, where she teaches at Henderson Community College.

Table of Contents

Top Ten Reasons for Using this Book     x
Introduction     xi
What's in a Word?     1
Spelling It All Out     2
Making More: Forming Plurals of Nouns     3
So Many Rules!     5
Unlocking the Secrets of Root Words, Prefixes, and Suffixes     9
Checkpoint     12
Cracking the Code of Punctuation     13
Avoiding the Problem of Miscommunication     14
The End of the Road     15
May I Quote You on That?     18
Quotes Within Quotes: Single Quotation Marks     22
Checkpoint     23
More Fun with Punctuation     25
The Dreaded Apostrophe     26
Cutting It Short: Contractions     26
What's Mine Is Yours: Possession     27
Joint Versus Individual Possession     30
A Rare Occasion: Using an Apostrophe to Form a Plural     30
Commendable Comma Comments     31
Using Commas with Compound Sentences     33
Checkpoint     38
Punctuation Pairs     39
Cleansing Your Colon     40
The Serviceable Semicolon     41
The Power to Divide and Unite: The Hyphen     44
May I Interrupt? The Dash     47
The Inside Scoop: Parentheses     48
Making a Rare Appearance: Square Brackets     50
Checkpoint     52
Wrapping It All Up     53
Getting Fancy: Italics and Underlining     54
Angling for Some Attention: Angle Brackets     58
What You're Not Saying...Ellipsis Points     59
Slash It All! The Slash/Virgule/Solidus     60
Checkpoint     61
Parts of Speech-the Big Eight     63
Step Right Up and Name Your Noun     64
Pithy Pronouncements on Pronouns     65
Three Little Questions for Adjectives     68
Show Me the Action (and the Being): Verbs     69
Admirable Advice about Adverbs     73
What's Your Position on Prepositions?     74
Who Put the Junction in Conjunction?     76
Heavens to Betsy! and Other Interjections     77
Checkpoint     78
More Pieces of the Puzzle     79
Here Come the Hybrids: Verbals     80
The Starring Roles: Subject and Predicate     84
Making It Complete: Complements     86
Checkpoint     90
Let's Have a Few Words      93
Finding Fundamental Phrases     94
Bringing It Up a Notch: Clauses     96
Putting It All Together: Constructing Sentences     101
Keeping the Harmony: Subject-Verb Agreement     104
Checkpoint     111
Pertinent Points about Pesky Pronouns     113
Introducing the Pronoun     114
The Numbers Game: Problems with Agreement     115
When in Doubt: Vague Pronoun References     118
One, Two, Three: What Person for Me?     122
Making a Case for Pronouns     124
Who and Whom: A Different Slant     128
Checkpoint     131
Figuring Out Some Finicky Forms     133
Let's Talk Tenses     134
Those Irritating Irregular Verbs     137
What Kind of Mood Are You In?     143
Comparatively Speaking     145
Avoiding Double Negatives     148
Checkpoint     149
Keeping It Coherent     151
Manglers of Meaning: Misplaced Modifiers     152
Dangling and Squinting Modifiers     154
Parallelism in Writing     155
Logically Speaking     162
Checkpoint      168
Shaping Strong Sentences     169
A Few Words about Fragments     170
Reining In Run-on Sentences     175
Transitional Words and Phrases     180
Classifying the Connectors     182
The Biggest Bugbears     184
Checkpoint     200
In Plain English, Please     201
Steering Clear of Cliches     202
No Need to Repeat Yourself!     204
When Less Is More     207
Close, but No Cigar: Misused Phrases     208
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Whose Mistakes Are Worst of All?     210
Checkpoint     215
Putting Pen to Paper     217
Practical and Profitable Preliminaries     218
Out in the Open: The Outline     223
Delineating the Details of Your First Draft     226
Relax and Leave Your Writing Alone-For Now     231
Checkpoint     232
The Final Dress Rehearsal     233
Rereading, Revising, and Rewriting     234
The Proof Is in the Reading     241
When Really Bad Is Really Good     243
Checkpoint     246
Maximizing Your Means of Expression     247
Short Takes      248
Business and Technical Writing     253
If X, Then Y: The Cause-and-Effect Essay     254
Learning to Look Beyond the Obvious     255
The Abridged Version: The Precis     256
The Process Paper     257
Digging Up the Details: The Research Paper     258
Checkpoint     260
Getting Personal     261
Taking a Stand: The Argument Essay     262
Advancing an Assessment: The Critical Analysis     263
Dear Diary: The Journal     264
Painting Word Pictures: The Essay of Description     265
The Autobiographical Narrative     266
An Opportune Occasion to Offer an Opinion     267
Egads! E-mail     268
Checkpoint     271
Literary Terms You Need to Know     273
Echoing Your English Teachers: The Basics     274
Beyond the Basics     275
In Praise of Prose     277
Praising Points of Poetry     280
Poetry-The Beat and the Feet     281
Oh! The Drama of It All!     283
Checkpoint     284
Latin-Alive and Kicking!     285
It's Everywhere! Everyday Latin     286
Ex Obscuritate in Lucem (From Ignorance to Learning)     288
Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat (Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse)     290
Feeling a Little Under the Weather? Latin in Medicine     293
Sacred Settings: Latin in Church     294
Checkpoint     296
Foreign Languages in Everyday American English     297
Neighbors to the South: Spanish     298
The French Connection     300
Achtung!-Paying Attention to German     302
For the Italian in All of Us     304
Come Together Right Now: Other Languages     306
Checkpoint     308
999 of the Most Commonly Misspelled Words     309
Root Words, Prefixes, and Suffixes     317
Suggested Substitutes for Wordy Phrases     323
Checkpoint Answers     327
Index     331