How many times have you gotten irritated because you either could not find the grammar or punctuation rule you needed or you could not keep the page flat as you attempted to put the instruction into practice? Rest assured, these days are over as soon as you put the Writer’s Digest Grammar Reference book to work on your desk!

The Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference is the comprehensive resource on grammar and usage, a necessity for every writer’s desk. It presents balanced instruction and real-world examples that will ensure professional and flawless work on every occasion. A comprehensive subject guide provides ease of use, and thorough discussions address such issues as punctuation, sentence structure, parts of speech and much more.

The book is dived into four parts and has 29 chapters, in addition to a subject guide and an excellent index. Each chapter contains rules, conventions and instructions with simple, clear and appropriate examples. There are sections on common errors and how to avoid them.

Part I (Grammar: An Overview) deals with nouns, verbs, modifiers and other parts of speech, phrases, and clauses.

The second part— Grammar: Rules, Conventions, and Errors to Avoid—deals with subject-verb agreement, errors in the use of verbs, parallelism, errors in modification (misplaced, dangling, and ambiguous modifiers), personal pronouns, pronoun-antecedent agreement, reference of pronouns, faulty comparisons, faulty predication, mishandled ellipitical constructions, problems with ‘that’, etc.

Part III (Punctuation: Rules, Conventions, and Errors to Avoid) gives a comprehensive treatment on punctuation marks and their usage. The nine chapters in this part cover terminal punctuation marks, comma, colon and semicolon, parentheses, dashes, apostrophe, question marks, specialized punctuation marks, hyphen, etc. There is also has a chapter that illustrates how to punctuate compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.

The fourth part (Mechanics and Usage) deals with issues like capitalization, presentation of numbers, abbreviations, etc. The glossary of commonly misused words is an excellent source to learn the words that one should be careful about while writing.

The Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference is a practical, comprehensive and accessible book. It fills a need in the grammar/punctuation reference book market offering correct grammar instruction that is reader-friendly, fun to read, and easy-to-understand. A must have for every writer.

Book Details:

• Author: Gary Lutz and Diane Stevenson
• Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books
• Year: 2005
• ISBN: 1582973350
• Cover & Page Count: Hardcover with concealed wire binding and tabs, 352 pages

There are hundreds of usage and style books available in the market that teaches one how to write correctly in English, how to cite references, how to make the writing interesting and error free. The most comprehensive ones are tomes like The Chicago Manual of Style that run into thousands of pages. But among the myriad of the style and usage guides there is a small volume (105 pages) that has helped millions of people to write better.

This book—Elements of Style—teaches one the basics of grammar and usage in a very short time. According to Boston Globe, “No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume.”

The book contains five sections in addition to a foreword, an introduction, an afterword, a glossary, and an index. The foreword is written by Roger Angell, stepson of E. B. White and an important figure in the world of American letters, where he recalls his memories about his stepfather and his writing habits.

The introduction is the one written by E. B. White for the 1979 edition. The introduction is an excellent essay on how to write effectively. White recounts his experiences with William Strunk, who taught him English and how he was entrusted with the task of revising and updating the little textbook written, published, and used by Professor Strunk for teaching English.

According to Professor Strunk, “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. This book will help you to do just that—to make every word tell.

The first part of the book is titled ‘The Elementary Rules of Usage.’ It contains rules for the correct usage. Each rule is illustrated with examples and made clear using explanations and comments. The second part contains elementary principles of composition. It contains principles that will make one’s writing clear, concise, interesting, and precise.

Part III titled ‘A Few Matters of Form,’ deals with the correct use like colloquialisms, exclamations, heading, hyphens, margins, numerals, etc. The fourth part explains the correct usage of commonly misused words and expressions.

Part V (An Approach to Style) is about writing that is captivating, interesting and correct. It contains advice drawn from a writer’s—E. B. White’s—experience of writing. It contains invaluable wisdom on how to use words and sentences to create magic. This chapter is reveals the secrets of the great writers and what differentiates masters of the craft from the rest.

The afterword by Charles Osgood explains why this small book should be a constant companion of all writers. The glossary contains a description of the technical terms with examples. The index is thorough and helps in improving the readability.

This book should be the daily companion for anyone who writes for a living and, for that matter, anyone who write at all.

Book Details:

• Author: William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White
• Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
• Edition & Year: Fourth, 1999
• ISBN: 0205313426
• Cover & Page Count: Hardcover, 105 Pages

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