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
