Synopses & Reviews
The fourth edition of this quick and practical guide to grammar, punctuation, and usage skills contains important features that distinguish it from other grammar workbooks. The text's three-part format highlights the 16 most vital grammar skills up front, leaving the rest of the text for secondary topics and additional grammar activities. A self-teaching approach enables students to see exactly what they need to brush up on, and gives them focused examples and practice exercises to speed them to mastery. Finally, the manageable size and short, well-organized chapters give students just the coverage they need.
About the Author
John Langan has taught reading and writing at Atlantic Community College near Atlantic City, New Jersey, for over twenty years. The author of a popular series of college textbooks on both subjects, he enjoys the challenge of developing materials that teach skills in an especially clear and lively way. Before teaching, he earned advanced degrees in writing at Rutgers University and in reading at Glassboro State College. He also spent a year writing fiction.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: Sixteen Basic Skills 1: Subjects and Verbs
2: More about Verbs
3: Subject-Verb Agreement
4: Sentence Types
5: Fragments
6: Run-Ons
7: Pronouns
8: Comma
9: Apostrophe
10: Quotation Marks
11: Other Punctuation Marks
12: Homonyms
13: Capital Letters
14: Word Choice
15: Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
16: Parallelism
Part Two: Extending the Skills 17: Paper Form
18: Spelling
19: Parts of Speech: A Review
20: Pronoun Types
21: Adjectives and Adverbs
22: Numbers and Abbreviations
23: Usage
24: More about Subjects and Verbs
25: Even More about Verbs
26: More about Subject-Verb Agreement
27: More about Run-Ons
28: More about the Comma
29: More about the Apostrophe
30: More about Quotation Marks
31: More about Punctuation Marks
32: More about Homonyms
33: More about Capital Letters
34: More about Word Choice
Part Three: Applying the Skills Combined Mastery Tests
Editing Tests