The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes, 11th Edition (2014)

Introduction

Now in its eleventh edition, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation will help you write and speak with confidence. You don't have to be an English major to understand grammar and punctuation. You just need rules and guidelines that are easy to understand, with real-world examples.

Whether you are an instructor teaching students the rules of English or a student, executive, professional writer, or avid blogger honing your grammar and punctuation skills, this book will help you zip through tests (including the SAT), reports, essays, letters, e-mails, and résumés. It will help you (and your writing) impress your teachers, your clients, and other readers.

Every generation of English scholars despairs because the language always seems to be at a crisis point. But it is undeniable that everywhere one looks nowadays, the principles in this book are casually and cavalierly violated.

The Blue Book will prove to be a valuable tool for teachers and students in achieving the goals of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Studying the chapters and working through the quizzes will provide students of all ages with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed beyond high school—in college and in the workplace. Students will learn how to use formal English in their writing and speaking and how to better express themselves through language. We also recommend reading the works of great writers to experience firsthand the art and beauty of effective communication.

This book is logical, self-paced, and fun to use, with scores of interesting and challenging quizzes that you may photocopy to your heart's content. Best of all, you can look forward to instant gratification, because the answers to the quizzes are included.

Throughout the text, certain terms have been set in boldface type (for instance, at the beginning of Chapter One, noun, common nouns, proper nouns). Due to space and other considerations, we could not always explore these linguistic terms as thoroughly as we might have wished. Readers are strongly urged to look further into these terms on their own. We also recommend that those who are serious about improving their English grammar always keep a dictionary close by and use it assiduously.

If you don't have time to research several leading reference books to figure out where the next comma should go or whether to write who or whom, you will find The Blue Book to be a pleasure to use. Dedicated to eliminating unnecessary jargon, it highlights the most important grammar, punctuation, and capitalization rules and guidelines and clarifies some of the language's most confusing and confounding words.

In Chapter One, “Grammar,” you will learn how to find nouns, verbs, and subjects and make sure they agree with one another. Next you will learn about clauses and phrases, the keys to understanding sentence structure. Then, on to pronoun usage, so that you will know whether to write I or me, he or him, who or whom, etc. From there, in the “Adjectives and Adverbs” section, you will discover why some words have -ly added to them, and why you must say, “She did well on the test,” rather than “She did good on the test.” After that, you will breeze through prepositions, learning some surprising rules, and we will debunk at least one myth. (Hint: Is it safe to ask, “What are you talking about?” or must we ask, “About what are you talking?”)

The “Effective Writing” section of Chapter One will give you helpful tips for constructing sentences and paragraphs that flow gracefully, making it easier to write quickly and well.

Chapter Two, “Punctuation,” takes on all the usual suspects: periods, commas, semicolons, colons, quotation marks, parentheses and brackets, apostrophes, hyphens, dashes, ellipses, question marks, and exclamation points. The best part about this and other chapters is that you will find an abundance of examples that you run across every day.

Then comes Chapter Three, “Capitalization,” in which you will get your most vexing questions answered, learning which words to capitalize in a title and when to capitalize job titles, such as president or director.

In Chapter Four, “Writing Numbers,” you will learn the importance of consistency when using numerals or writing out numbers. You will also learn how to write fractions and large numbers.

After that, you will enjoy spending time reading all about affect vs. effect, lay vs. lie, their vs. there vs. they're, and its vs. it's in Chapter Five, “Confusing Words and Homonyms.” We have provided hundreds of words and phrases for you in this chapter, so you will never again have to be confused by the differences between farther and further, continual and continuous, flaunt and flout, tortuous and torturous, and all the rest of the trickiest and most commonly misused words and phrases in the English language.

Promise not to skip the quizzes, pretests, or mastery tests in Chapter Six. The more you practice, the more confident you will become. Once you get over any fears about test taking, we think you will find the quizzes both enjoyable and challenging. You will find the answers in Chapter Seven.

Please visit www.GrammarBook.com, where you will find all the quizzes in the book in a multiple-choice, interactive format. If you are a teacher or are really jazzed about improving your English skills, on the website you will also find

· Hundreds of additional downloadable, interactive quizzes in the “Subscription” area

· Dozens of free one-minute videos by Jane Straus on English language usage

· All the rules and examples you see in the book

· A sign-up box on the home page for our free weekly e-newsletter with tips and articles

· Our blog

· Recommendations for further reading and study

The point of grammar proficiency is to be clear and direct, and to avoid misunderstanding. We hope you will come away from this book with this mantra: “Think before you write.” Be sure every sentence conveys what you mean, with no possibility of ambiguity or inadvertent meaninglessness.

That being said, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

We hope you find The Blue Book to be both enjoyable and invaluable.

Note

The authors researched the leading reference books on American English grammar and punctuation including The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, Fowler's Modern English Usage, Bernstein's The Careful Writer, and many others. The authors provide rules, guidance, and examples based on areas of general agreement among the authorities. Where the authorities differ, this book provides options to follow based on the reader's purpose in writing, with this general advice: be consistent.