American Heritage Dictionaries. Editors - The American Heritage book of English usage
Here you can read online American Heritage Dictionaries. Editors - The American Heritage book of English usage full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1996, publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, genre: Children. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The American Heritage book of English usage
- Author:
- Publisher:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Genre:
- Year:1996
- Rating:4 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The American Heritage book of English usage: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The American Heritage book of English usage" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
American Heritage Dictionaries. Editors: author's other books
Who wrote The American Heritage book of English usage? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
The American Heritage book of English usage — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The American Heritage book of English usage" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 1. Grammar: Traditional Rules, Word Order, Agreement, and Case |
| 1. absolute constructions |
Absolute constructions consist of a noun and some kind of modifier, the most common being a participle. Because they often come at the beginning of a sentence, they are easily confused with dangling participles. But an absolute construction modifies the rest of the sentence, not the subject of the sentence (as a participial phrase does). You can use absolute constructions to compress two sentences into one and to vary sentence structure as a means of holding a readers interest. Here are some examples:
| 1 | ||||
Constructions like these are used more often in writing than in speaking, where it is more common to use a full clause: When the paint was dry, we brought the furniture out on the deck. There are, however, many fixed absolute constructions that occur frequently in speech:
| 2 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Copyright 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints |
| 1. a / an |
| In modern written English, we use a before a word beginning with a consonant sound, however it may be spelled (a frog, a university, a euphemism). We use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an orange, an hour). At one time, an was an acceptable alternative before words beginning with a consonant sound but spelled with a vowel (an one, an united appeal), but this usage is now entirely obsolete. | 1 |
| An was also once a common variant before words beginning with h in which the first syllable was unstressed; thus 18th-century authors wrote either a historical or an historical, but a history, not an history. This usage made sense in that people often did not pronounce the initial h in words such as historical and heroic, but by the late 19th century, educated speakers were usually giving their initial hs a huff, and the practice of writing an began to die out. Nowadays it survives primarily before the word historical. You may also come across it in the phrases an hysterectomy or an hereditary trait. These usages are acceptable in formal writing. | 2 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Copyright 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 5. Gender: Sexist Language and Assumptions |
| 1. alumna / alumnus |
| Alumnae and alumni are women and men who have been reared or nourished by their alma mater, their nourishing mother. Alumnus, alumna, and alma are all derived from the Latin verb alere, to nourish. Alumnus is a masculine noun whose plural is alumni, and alumna is a feminine noun with the plural alumnae. Coeducational institutions usually use alumni for graduates of both sexes. But those who object to masculine forms in such cases prefer to use alumni and alumnae or the form alumnae/i, which is the choice of many womens colleges that have begun to admit men. | 1 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Copyright 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 2. Style: Parallelism, Passives, Redundancy, and Wordiness |
| 1. both and |
| When using both and and to link parallel elements, make the words or phrases that follow them correspond grammatically. That is, whatever grammatical construction follows both, the same construction should also follow and. Thus you should say Sales have risen in both India and China or Sales have risen both in India and in China, but not Sales have risen both in India and China. | 1 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Copyright 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 4. Science Terms: Distinctions, Restrictions, and Confusions |
| 1. abductor / adductor |
| Standing upright. Riding a horse. Holding a glass, or a pen, or a paintbrush. Hitchhiking. Crossing your fingers. Spreading your toes apart so you can wiggle them in the sand. These are all activities that result from the actions of muscles known as abductors and adductors. Muscles that are abductors move body parts away from each other or from the trunk of the body itself. For example, an abductor muscle moves your thumb away from your index finger, allowing the popular thumbs up salute or the widely recognized sign for thumbing a ride. Abductor comes from Latin abducere, which is built of the prefix ab-, away, and the verb ducere, to bring. Adductor muscles, in contrast, bring body parts together or bring them closer to the body. It is a group of adductor muscles in the inner thigh, for example, that allows a rider to sit firmly astride a horse. Once the rider has dismounted, the same group of adductors works in concert with other thigh muscles to enable him or her to stand upright. Adductor comes from Latin adducere, which combines ad-, to, and the verb ducere. | 1 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. |
| A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996. |
| 7. Pronunciation Challenges: Confusions and Controversy |
| 1. a |
| The indefinite article is generally pronounced (a boy, a girl. When stressed for emphasis, it is pronounced (not a person was left. The form an, which is used before vowels, also has a stressed and an unstressed variant. | 1 |
| The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Copyright 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «The American Heritage book of English usage»
Look at similar books to The American Heritage book of English usage. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book The American Heritage book of English usage and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.