Joanne Adams - Grammar: Know Your Shit or Know Youre Shit

GRAMMAR

Copyright Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2015

Research by Abbie Headon

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

Condition of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Summersdale Publishers Ltd
46 West Street
Chichester
West Sussex
PO19 1RP
UK

www.summersdale.com

eISBN: 978-1-78372-671-4

Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Nicky Douglas by telephone: +44 (0) 1243 756902, fax: +44 (0) 1243 786300 or email: .

CONTENTS

WELCOME!

Whether youre a confident writer whos looking to brush up your grammar skills, or someone who turns pale at the sound of terms like future perfect or double negative, this book is here to help you.

Before we begin, its important to think about the concept of rules, and what were trying to achieve. People who write and think about language often fall into two camps. On one side we have the descriptivists, who look at language as it is actually used in everyday life by real people. The descriptive approach to language looks at how usage changes over time, and does not cling to old and out-of-date practices. This means that a descriptivist is less likely to wince if you say LOL instead of That was funny. On the other side are the prescriptivists, who have studied the rules of English closely and spend their time disseminating them in order to maintain the quality of the language. These people probably will wince if you say LOL and if you say That made me LOL IRL, as I have been known to do, it might even make them fume and grind their teeth.

However, in real life, most people tend to fall somewhere in the middle of this slightly artificial divide. We know that some expressions are more acceptable than others, but we also know that new words are entering the language seemingly faster than ever (just look at twerk, selfie and Twitterati), while other words are seeing their meanings change (for example, hipsters used to be low-rise jeans, and now theyre bearded men in low-sperm-motility jeans).

So what we need is a middle path between the extremes of prescribing and describing. We want to make ourselves understood, and we need to choose a way of speaking or writing thats appropriate to the context were in. The tools of grammar are here to help us achieve precisely those goals. In this book Ill be showing you how grammar works, by looking at the parts of speech, punctuation and confusing words. The book is designed so that you can easily dip in and out of it to find the answers you need to the questions that are on your mind. And by the end, when it comes to grammar, you really will know your shit!

Writing is the geometry of the soul.

Plato

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Each chapter tackles a specific subject, and within the chapters youll find numerous subsections, each guiding you through one aspect of the English language. Peppered throughout the text, there are also a variety of boxes focusing on different themes: