Rebecca Elliott Ph.D. - Painless Grammar (Barrons Painless)

A user-friendly, action-packed, funfilled book for kids who want to learn to write well without atrophying their brains from boredom. When my son was in eighth grade, I volunteered to help his language arts teacher by editing students' papers for their writing lab. It was a joy to go inside the kids' minds to share their thoughts and experiences, but I was distressed that many of them would not have realized, that this sentence contains a totally unnecessary comma. That's one reason I wrote this book. As I edited the students' papers, I began to wonder, is it possible to teach kids to love to writeand to love to write correctlywithout boring them to death? I believe it is, and that's the other reason I wrote Painless Grammar. Kids, this book is for you. Chapter One is entitled "Parts of Speech," but I thought about calling it either "Writing Wrongs" or "Goofs Galore." As you become more familiar with the parts of speech, you'll also become more skilled at using them correctly and avoiding the many errors that sneak into students' writing.

Chapter Two shows you how to weave all those parts of speech into sentences and how to tell a complete sentence from an incomplete sentence. Once you've written a great sentence, you'll learn in this chapter how to punctuate it correctly. Try not to think of punctuation as a bunch of boring rules; think of it as a set of road signsways to help your reader navigate easily and comfortably through your writing. If you put punctuation marks, in weird places [as I'm-doing-here]: your reader, soon feels; lost not to "mention" confused and (exasperated). Chapter Three is on agreementverbs agreeing with their subjects and pronouns agreeing with their antecedents.

When to capitalize nouns Names of specific people CAPS: Tucker, Tori, Juanita, Denzel, the Stevens family, the Joneses NO CAPS: family, boy, girl, sister, cousin What about mom and dad? Capitalize them when you're calling your parent's name but not when you refer to "my mom" or "my dad." CAPS: Hi, Mom! Welcome home, Dad. NO CAPS: My father and my mother are busy. Could your mom or your dad drive us to the movie?

The mountains are high.

Specific school courses, but not general subjects CAPS: I'm taking Algebra 101 and History of China. NO CAPS: I'm taking algebra and history.

Brand names CAPS: Chevrolet Camaro, Nintendo, Cheerios, Nestle's Crunch Names of planets, but not sun and moon and sometimes not earth CAPS: Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, Earth (capitalized when you're referring to it as one of the planets) NO CAPS: The moon is full tonight. More than six billion people live on the earth. Letters that stand alone CAPS: U-turn, T-shirt, X-ray, an A+ in social studies class Names of specific teams and clubs and their members CAPS: the Atlanta Braves, the Republican Party, Republicans NO CAPS: I play on a baseball team. Titles of movies, books, chapters, and articles CAPS: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, "Tar Heels Beat Duke 102-96," Gulliver's Travels