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    Grammar Simplified
    Grammar Simplified
    Grammar Simplified
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Grammar Simplified

    By Paul James

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    About this ebook

    Grammar Simplified is exactly as its name suggests, grammar simplified in less than 50 pages. It's not a matter of just getting your message across, you want your readers to understand your thoughts and intentions correctly, as a wrong word or misplaced punctuation mark could change your intended meaning. Readers have come to expect excellent grammar and punctuation in what they read, and as a writer, you have one chance to make a good first impression. Readers are often quick to make judgments, if they see a misspelled word or grammar error, they quickly form a negative impression of the writer. They will come to the conclusion that either the writer doesn't know what's correct, doesn't care, or was in a hurry and didn't take the time to check their work.

    Simplified grammar reviews critical yet under practiced guidelines of Standard English grammar. Learn the grammar rules you absolutely need to know to immediately improve your writing. The focus of this book is applying grammar rules, rather than just merely memorizing them.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPaul James
    Release dateSep 30, 2015
    ISBN9781311585370
    Grammar Simplified
    Author

    Paul James

    Paul James is Director of the Globalism Institute and Professor of Globalism and Cultural Diversity at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has written and edited several books including Global Matrix (Pluto, 2005).

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      Book preview

      Grammar Simplified - Paul James

      Grammar Simplified

      Paul James

      Copyright 2015 by Paul James

      Smashwords Edition

      Contents

      Introduction

      Nouns

      Verbs

      Articles

      Pronouns

      Pronoun Categories

      Pronoun Cases

      Adverbs

      Adjectives

      Conjunctions

      Prepositions

      Clauses and Phrases

      Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses

      Sentence Structure

      Making Sentences Parallel

      Possessive Rules

      Passive and Active Voices

      Using Homophones

      Writing or Spelling a Number

      Comma Rules

      Punctuation Rules

      Introduction

      Like it or not grammar is an essential part of written communication, not only does it improve the clarity of your writing, but it also increases readers’ confidence in your ideas. The focus of this book is not merely memorizing every single grammar rule. But instead, the focus is to help you to apply the basic principles so you can avoid making mistakes in your writing. In this book, you will learn about the different parts of speech, possessive rules, when to write and spell numbers, and much more. I have intentionally kept this book short to focus on application, rather than just memorizing rules. Let’s begin.

      Parts of Speech

      Nouns

      Nouns are probably the easiest parts of speech to identify. A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. In other words, nouns are anything that exists that can be named. Nouns answer the questions What is it? and Who is it? in a sentence, and the subject of a sentence is likely to be a noun. Let’s look at some examples to further understand nouns. For example, someone asks the question of who likes the new facilities, and you answer: The employees like the new exercise facilities. In this example, the words employees and facilities are the nouns. The first word, employees, is the name of a group of people, and this noun is the subject of this sentence. The second word, facilities, is also a noun because it is the name of a place and answers the question What do the employees like?

      Concrete and Abstract Nouns – Common Nouns

      In our previous example, the words employees and facilities are also examples of concrete nouns. These types of nouns are called concrete because we can experience them with our five senses; we can see them, hear them, smell them, taste them, and feel them. So, regarding the first word, employees, it is a concrete noun because we can see, touch, and hear employees. The same is true for the second example, facilities; this is something that we can also see, touch, and experience.

      Another class of nouns is the abstract noun, and these are the opposite of concrete nouns. We cannot experience abstract nouns with our senses. For example, let’s examine the statement Compassion is necessary for empathy. In this example, the words compassion and empathy are examples of abstract nouns because we can’t touch, see, hear, taste, or smell compassion or empathy. However, it is possible for us to witness an act of compassion, though we cannot see compassion itself. Both abstract and concrete nouns are referred to as common nouns because these nouns are generic and are used regularly in speech.

      Proper Nouns

      Proper nouns are the opposite of common nouns, and they are distinctive in two ways. First, they name something specific, and secondly, they begin with a capital letter regardless of where they occur in the sentence. For example, Paul and Richard like to meet at Zak’s Gym. In this example the words Paul, Richard, Zak, and Gym are the nouns. The first two nouns answer the question of Who? and What? This makes them the subject of the sentence. The second pair of nouns answers the question of Where? In this example it is at Zak’s Gym. These nouns are capitalized because they refer to a specific place and two specific people.

      Another example of proper nouns is when you are talking about a specific landmark, town, or country. For example, Hotel Victoria is in Chelsea, London. So, in this example, we are talking about a specific hotel a specific area and city. Once again, these are all proper nouns and also need to be capitalized.

      When to Capitalize

      In most cases, it is easy to figure out when you need to capitalize, but there are some tricky situations where you will need to think quickly about the sentence before capitalizing. For example, let’s examine the statement Tell Mom that I will be home late. In this example, the word Mom has replaced a name, like Tracy or Claire; therefore, it must be

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