Anderson Wendy M - English Grammar Essentials For Dummies

Australian Edition

English Grammar Essentials

by Wendy M Anderson

Geraldine Woods

Lesley J Ward

English Grammar Essentials For Dummies

Australian edition published by
Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd
42 McDougall Street
Milton, Qld 4064

www.dummies.com

Copyright 2013 Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Author:Anderson, Wendy M

Title:English Grammar Essentials For Dummies/Wendy M Anderson; Geraldine Woods; Lesley J Ward.

Edition:Australian ed.

ISBN:9781118493311 (pbk.)

Series:For Dummies

Notes:Includes index

Subjects:English language Grammar.

English language Grammar Problems, exercises, etc.

English language Self-instruction.

Other Authors/Contributors:Woods, Geraldine

Ward, Lesley J

Dewey Number:428.2

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About the Authors

Wendy M Anderson spent the first decade or so of her professional life as an English teacher before reinventing herself as an education publisher. She then moved on to teaching editing and professional writing to adult learners, guest lecturing in grammar and tutoring in a university English department, and facilitating corporate workshops in business communication. She occupies the remaining daylight hours (and lots of the non-daylight hours too) enjoying the feast or famine world of the freelance writer/editor and has been widely published. She lives on the Bass Coast and strongly denies all accusations that she has a few wallabies loose in the top paddock.

Geraldine Woods career as a grammarian began in her elementary school, which in those days was called grammar school for very good reason. With the guidance of a series of nuns carrying long rulers, she learned how to diagram every conceivable type of sentence. She has been an English teacher for over 25 years and has written 40 books, give or take a few. She loves baseball, Chinese food and the novels of Jane Austen.

Lesley J Ward has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years, editing and proofreading. She is a founder member of the UK Society of Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), and regularly leads training courses for SfEP, the Irish Book Publishers Association and the London College of Communications. She is also a distance-learning tutor for the Publishing Training Centre. She lives in Berkshire and is notorious for being a harmless eccentric/dangerous radical who refuses to have email.

Publishers Acknowledgements

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Introduction

Chances are youre reading this book because youre not confident about what constitutes proper grammar. Perhaps you went to school in an era when teachers didnt believe in worrying kids about pedantic things like correct spelling and complete sentences. Or, maybe you did study grammar but you found it boring, switched off and have forgotten most of the rules. Now, you may feel that your language skills arent as good as they need to be. Feeling that you are being judged on your communication can be stressful and make you feel self-conscious. And its worse if everyone else seems to understand, or if you find to your horror that the boss or tutor is one of those people who even uses perfect grammar in text messages.

English grammar is not that scary. You dont have to memorise all of the technical terms and, once you get started, youll find that most of it is pretty logical. In this book we present you with strategies and tips that help you make the right decision when youre tossing up whether to use who or whom , or trying to remember if you should put the apostrophe in its . We explain what youre supposed to do when, tell you why a particular way of doing things is correct or incorrect, and even show you how to revise your sentences if your grammar checker puts a squiggly green line under some part of your sentence. Once you understand the reason for a particular grammar choice, youll pick the correct option automatically.

About This Book

In this book, we concentrate on common errors and tell you whats what in the sentence, in logical, everyday English, not in obscure terminology. When we do use a key term, youll generally find it in italics with a definition or example (or both) close by. You dont have to read the chapters in order, but you can. And you dont have to read the whole book. Just browse through the table of contents and look for things that have always troubled you.