The Handy English Grammar Answer Book offers fundamental principles, grammar rules, punctuation advice, insights on writing, and writing examples for everyone and every occasion. From a brief history of the English language to the deconstruction and explanation of the different parts of a sentence, and from showing how to punctuate correctly to how to organize a well-argued essay, this easy-to-use reference answers nearly 500 questions and offers fun facts on the English language and its usage.

Table of Contents

• PHOTO CREDITS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• THE ROOTS OF MODERN ENGLISH
• THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE CHANGE
• IMPORTANT GRAMMATICAL CONCEPTS AND TERMS
• SENTENCE STRUCTURE
• Parts of Speech
• Ways in Which Sentences Are Structured
• The Many Different Tenses of English Verbs
• SPELLING CORRECTLY
• General Information about Spelling
• General Spelling Rules and Patterns
• Spelling Noun Plurals Correctly
• USING PUNCTUATION CORRECTLY
• Using End Punctuation Correctly
• Using Commas Correctly
• Using Semicolons and Colons Correctly
• using Apostrophes and Quotation Marks Correctly
• Other Punctuation: Parentheses, Hyphens, Dashes, Brackets, Slashes, Bullet Points
• USING MECHANICS CORRECTLY
• Using Capital Letters Correctly
• Using Italics and Underlining Correctly
• Using Abbreviations Correctly
• Using Numbers Correctly
• Using Ellipses Correctly
• WRITING EFFECTIVE AND CORRECT SENTENCES
• Making Your Sentences Readable
• Some Common Sentence Problems with Adjectives and Adverbs
• Some Common Sentence Problems with Prepositions
• Some Common Sentence Problems with Pronouns
• Some Common Sentence Problems with Verbs
• USING WORDS EFFECTIVELY AND CORRECTLY
• Using a Dictionary and a Thesaurus
• Denotation and Connotation
• Levels of Formality
• Language and Identity
• ACADEMIC WRITING
• Writing in Different Disciplines
• Academic Research
• The Term or Research Paper
• Documentation
• Essays and Essay Exams
• WRITING IN SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
• WRITING IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
• WRITING IN THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES
• BUSINESS WRITING
• Invitations and Announcements
• LEARNING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
• ESL Problems with Verbs
• ESL Problems with Nouns
• ESL Problems with Articles
• ESL Problems with Word Order
• ESL Students and Vocabulary Problems
• ENGLISH IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE
• Electronic Communication
• APPENDIX
• FURTHER READING and USEFUL WEB SITES
• APPENDIX A: IRREGULAR VERB CHART
• APPENDIX B: IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS
• APPENDIX C: HOMOPHONES
• APPENDIX D: ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS
• APPENDIX E: MISUSED HOMOPHONES
• APPENDIX F: FREQUENTLY MISSPELLED WORDS
• APPENDIX G: WORDY PHRASES
• APPENDIX H: FREQUENTLY CONFUSED WORD PAIRS
• APPENDIX I: FAMOUS QUOTATIONS ON WRITING AND GRAMMAR
• APPENDIX J: MODEL PAPERS
• APPENDIX K: MODEL BIBLIOGRAPHY STYLES
• APPENDIX L: TWENTY COMMON GRAMMAR GREMLINS AND HOW TO FIX THEM