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• English Grammar Workbook For Dummies
• About the Authors
• Dedication
• Authors’ Acknowledgments
• Contents at a Glance
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• About This Book
• Conventions Used in This Book
• Foolish Assumptions
• How This Book Is Organised
• Part I: Laying the Foundations: Grammar Basics
• Part II: Mastering Mechanics
• Part III: The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
• Part IV: All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
• Part V: Writing with Style
• Part VI: The Part of Tens
• Icons Used in This Book
• Where to Go from Here
• Part I Laying the Foundations: Grammar Basics
• Chapter 1 Placing the Proper Verb in the Proper Place
• Choosing Past, Present or Future
• Shining a Light on Perfect Tenses
• Navigating the Irregular Forms
• Mastering the Two Most Common Irregulars: Be and Have
• Getting By with a Little Help from Some Other Verbs
• Extra Practice with Verbs
• Answers to Problems on Verbs and Verb Tenses
• Chapter 2 Matchmaker, Make Me a Match: Pairing Subjects and Verbs Correctly
• Coping When One Just Isn’t Enough: Plural Nouns
• Bringing Together Subjects and Verbs
• Taming the Terrible Twos: Difficult Subjects to Match with Verbs
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Hitching Subjects and Verbs
• Answers to Subject and Verb Pairing Problems
• Chapter 3 Who Is She, and What Is It? The Lowdown on Pronouns
• Separating Singular and Plural Pronouns
• Taking Possession of the Right Pronoun
• Discovering that it’s All in the Details: Possessives versus Contractions
• Avoiding Double Meanings
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Basic Pronouns
• Answers to Pronoun Problems
• Chapter 4 Finishing What You Start: Writing Complete Sentences
• Seeking Out the Subject/Verb Pair
• Checking for Complete Thoughts
• Going for Flow: Joining Sentences Correctly
• Finishing with Flair: Choosing Endmarks
• Complete or Incomplete? That Is the Question
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Complete Sentences
• Answers to Complete Sentence Problems
• Part II Mastering Mechanics
• Chapter 5 Exercising Comma Sense
• Making a List and Checking It Twice
• You Talkin’ to Me? Direct Address
• Dating and Addressing
• Introducing (and Interrupting) with the Comma
• Setting Off Descriptions
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Commas
• Answers to Comma Problems
• Chapter 6 Made You Look! Punctuation Marks That Demand Attention
• Connectors and Dividers: Hyphens
• Just Dashing Through
• Sorting Out Semicolons
• Placing Colons
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Hyphens, Dashes, Colons, and Semicolons
• Answers to Punctuation Problems
• Chapter 7 One Small Mark, a Whole New Meaning: Apostrophes
• Putting Words on a Diet: Contractions
• Taking Possession
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Apostrophes
• Answers to Apostrophe Problems
• Chapter 8 ‘Let Me Speak!’ Quotation Marks
• Giving Written Words a Voice: Punctuating Direct Quotations
• Embedding One Quotation inside Another
• Punctuating Titles
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Quotation Marks
• Answers to Quotation Problems
• Chapter 9 Hitting the Big Time: Capital Letters
• Bowing to Convention and Etiquette: People’s Names and Titles
• Entering the Worlds of Business and Education
• Capitalising Titles of Literary and Media Works
• Placing Geographical Capitals
• Tackling Abbreviations: AM or p.m.?
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Capital Letters
• Answers to Capitalisation Problems
• Part III The Pickier Points of Correct Verb and Pronoun Use
• Chapter 10 The Case of It (And Other Pronouns)
• Meeting the Subject at Hand and the Object of My Affection
• Choosing Between ‘Who’ and ‘Whom’
• Linking Up with Pronounsin ‘To Be’ Sentences
• Discovering Whether You’re Talking to Meor I: Pronouns as Objects of Prepositions
• Matching Possessive Pronounsto ‘-ing’ Nouns
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Pronoun Case
• Answers to Pronoun Case Problems
• Chapter 11 Choosing the Best Pronoun for a Tricky Sentence
• Nodding in Agreement: Pronouns and Possessives Come Head to Head
• Tackling Pronouns for Companies and Organisations
• Decoding Who, That and Which
• Getting Down to Specifics: Avoiding Improper Pronoun References
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Tricky Pronoun Situations
• Answers to Advanced Pronoun Problems
• Chapter 12 Travelling in Time: Tricky Verb Tense Situations
• Telling Tales of the Past
• Communicating When You’re Stuck in the Present
• Tackling the Timeline: Verbals to the Rescue
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Verb Tenses
• Answers to Advanced Verb Tense Problems
• Chapter 13 Getting Your Verbs in the Right Mood
• Stating the Obvious: Indicative Mood
• Taking Command: Imperative Mood
• Telling Lies or Being Passive: Subjunctive Mood
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Moody Verbs
• Answers to Verb Mood Problems
• Part IV All You Need to Know about Descriptions and Comparisons
• Chapter 14 Writing Good or Well: Adjectives, Adverbs and Articles
• Distinguishing Between Adjectives and Adverbs
• Asking How It’s Going: Choosing Between Good/Well and Bad/Badly
• Mastering the Art of Articles
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Descriptors
• Answers to Adjective and Adverb Problems
• Chapter 15 Going on Location: Placing Descriptions Correctly
• Situating ‘Even’, ‘Only’ and Similar Words: Little Words Mean a Lot
• Avoiding Misplaced Descriptions: It Must Be Here Somewhere!
• Hanging off a Cliff: Dangling Descriptions
• Being Dazed and Confused: Vague Descriptions
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice Placing Descriptions
• Answers to Description Placement Problems
• Chapter 16 Forming Comparisons: For Better or Worse
• Visiting the -ER (and the -EST): Creating Comparisons
• Going from Bad to Worse (and Good to Better): Irregular Comparisons
• Using Words That Are Incomparable (Like You!)
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Bad Comparisons
• Answers to Comparison Problems
• Chapter 17 Apples and Oranges: Improper Comparisons
• Ensuring That You Complete Comparisons: No One Likes to Feel Incomplete
• Being Smarter Than Yourself: Illogical Comparisons
• Doubling Up Trouble: A Sentence Containing More Than One Comparison
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Improper Comparisons
• Answers to Complicated Comparison Problems
• Part V Writing with Style
• Chapter 18 Practising Parallel Structure
• Understanding When Geometry Invades English: Parallelism Basics
• Avoiding Unnecessary Shifts in Tense, Person and Voice
• Matchmaking – The Basics: Either/Or, Not Only/But Also and Similar Pairs
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Parallels
• Answers to Parallelism Problems
• Chapter 19 Spicing Up and Trimming Down Your Sentences
• Beginning with a Bang: Adding Introductory Elements
• Smoothing Out Choppy Sentences
• Being Awkward but Interesting: Reversed Sentence Patterns
• Shedding and Eliminating Redundancy
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice Honing Your Sentences
• Answers to Sentence Improvement Problems
• Chapter 20 Steering Clear of Tricky Word Traps
• Separating Almost-Twins: Commonly Confused Words
• Comparing Quantities without Numbers
• Bursting Your Bubble: Sorry, but Some Common Expressions Are Wrong
• Tackling Verbs That Give You a Headache
• Combining Rightfully Independent Words
• Brain Strain: Extra Practice with Tricky Words
• Answers to Tricky Word Problems
• Part VI The Part of Tens
• Chapter 21 Ten Overcorrections
• Substituting ‘Whom’ for ‘Who’
• Inserting Unnecessary ‘Hads’
• Repeating Again and Again
• Sending ‘I’ to Do a ‘Me’ Job
• Speaking or Writing Passively
• Making Sentence Structure Too Complicated
• Letting Descriptions Dangle
• Becoming Allergic to ‘They’ and ‘Their’
• Being Semi-Attached to Semicolons
• Not Knowing When Enough Is Enough
• Chapter 22 Ten Errors to Avoid at All Costs
• Writing Incomplete Sentences
• Letting Sentences Run On and On
• Forgetting to Capitalise ‘I’
• Being Stingy with Quotation Marks
• Using Pronouns Incorrectly
• Placing New Words in the Wrong Context
• Letting Slang Seep into Your Speech
• Forgetting to Proofread
• Relying on Computer Checks for Grammar and Spelling
• Repeating Yourself
• Appendix Your Final Challenge
• Exercise One
• Exercise Two
• Exercise Three
• Exercise Four
• Answers to Exercise One
• Answers to Exercise Two
• Answers to Exercise Three
• Answers to Exercise Four
• Index
• Adevrt