English Grammar for Writing
1. Speech vs. Writing The Most Important Technology Writing vs. Pictures Writing vs. Speech Sender's Efficiency vs. Recipient's Understanding The Differences between Speaking and Writing Why Writing Is Harder Than Speaking 2. The Major Parts of Speech What's a Part of Speech? Content Words Tests for Identification Difficult Cases Application to Writing 3. The Minor Parts of Speech Some Selected Closed Classes Application to Writing 4. Phrases: The Art of Chunking What Are Phrases? Classifying Phrases Heads Clauses 5. More on Phrases Sentence Diagrams Counting Phrases Diagramming Infinitive Verb Phrases and Possessive Noun Phrases Diagramming Present Participle Verb Phrases Diagramming Modal Phrases Diagramming Subordinate Clauses The Challenges of Phrase Boundaries Application to Writing 6. Grammatical Roles: Distinguishing Identical Elements Verb-Phrase Patterns Identification Rules for Grammatical Roles Application to Writing 7. Adverbials and Other Elements in the Clause The Other Elements: Examples of Grammatical Necessity Adverbials Application to Writing 8. Passive? Tense? What's on That Verb? Tense More than Temporal Information Tense-Aspect Forms How to Tell Them Apart Tense in Writing Passives Changing Voice The Interaction of Tense with Voice Application to Writing Postscript 9. Putting Words Together: Coordination, Subordination, and Parallelism Coordination Punctuation for Coordination Subordination Punctuation for Subordinate Clauses Parallelism Conceptual Parallelism What's the Problem with Parallelism Errors? A Note on Punctuation in Parallel Structures Application to Writing A Note on Some Marks of Punctuation 10. The System of Modifiers Adverbials Adjectivals Absolute Phrases The Structure of Sentences with Modifiers The Placement of Modifiers 11. Structuring Information in Writing Intonation New and Old Information Vague Errors Reordering the Sentence Placement of Modifiers Word Choice and Intonation 12. Word Choices The Dictionary vs. the Lexicon Commonly Confused Words English Spelling Subject-Verb Agreement Respect in Language Gender-Neutral Language 13. The Written Standard and the Oral Varieties of English Linguistic Diversity The System of Black English The System of Appalachian English Standard English and Dialects Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Appendix: The Grammatical Analysis of Literature Metrical Analysis Grammatical Analysis of Poetry Grammatical Analysis of Prose