Table of Contents

Introduction - THE PROBLEM WITH OUR ENGLISH

Chapter 1  English When It Fizzles
Chapter 2  Why We Can’t Write Better English
Chapter 3  Writing to Get That Job
Chapter 4  A More Focused Way to Improve Our English
Chapter 5  Developing Our Power Over Language

Part I - BUILDING THE ENGLISH SENTENCE

Section 1 - Looking More Closely at the English Sentence

Chapter 6  Making the Best Use of Simple Sentences
Chapter 7  Combining Ideas into Compound Sentences
Chapter 8  Using Complex Sentences to Texture Ideas
Chapter 9  The Upper Limits of Sentence Construction
Chapter 10  Varying Structure to Enrich Sentences

Section 2 - Combining and Linking Our Ideas

Chapter 11  Establishing Meaning with Connectives
Chapter 12  How the Coordinating Conjunctions Work
Chapter 13  How the Conjunctive Adverbs Work
Chapter 14  How the Subordinating Conjunctions Work

Section 3 - Establishing the Logic of Our Ideas

Chapter 15  The Six Basic Logical Relationships
Chapter 16  Establishing the Additive Relationship
Chapter 17  Establishing the Comparative and Time Relationship
Chapter 18  Establishing the Causal or Reason-Result Relationship
Chapter 19  Establishing the Conditional and Example Relationship

Section 4 - Establishing Relationships Within Clauses

Chapter 20  The Things That Prepositions Do
Chapter 21  The Prepositions of Space and Time
Chapter 22  The Prepositions of Motion and Direction
Chapter 23  The Prepositions for Establishing Time Relationships
Chapter 24  The Prepositions as Logical Connectives

Section 5 - Harnessing the Various Grammar Structures

Chapter 25  Getting to Know the Noun Phrase Better
Chapter 26  The Behavior of Noun Clauses
Chapter 27  The Seven Uses of Noun Clauses
Chapter 28  How Gerunds and Infinitives Work
Chapter 29  Choosing Between Gerunds and Infinitives
Chapter 30  How Infinitive Phrases Work
Chapter 31  How Gerund Phrases Work
Chapter 32  The Uses of Participles and Participial Phrases
Chapter 33  The Flexible Positions of Participial Phrases
Chapter 34  The Baffling Thing About Absolute Phrases
Chapter 35  The Subtle Job That Absolute Phrases Do
Chapter 36  The Four Forms that Absolute Phrases Take

Section 6 - Managing Our Pronouns Better

Chapter 37  A Closer Look at the English Pronouns
Chapter 38  Complications When Using Personal Pronouns
Chapter 39  Using Pronouns and Nouns in Combination
Chapter 40  Problematic Uses of Personal Pronouns
Chapter 41  Other Problematic Pronoun Constructions
Chapter 42  The Seven Other Kinds of Pronouns
Chapter 43  The Grammar of the Indefinite Pronouns
Chapter 44  Handling Pronouns with Unclear Antecedents

Section 7 - Mastering the English Tenses

Chapter 45  Clarifying Tense with the Adverbs of Time
Chapter 46  Tense in Cases of Clause Dependency
Chapter 47  The Arranged Futures
Chapter 48  The Predicted Futures and Timetable Futures
Chapter 49  The Described Futures
Chapter 50  The Uncertain Futures
Chapter 51  The Historical, Literary, and Eternal Present
Chapter 52  How Verbs Behave in Exceptional Sequence
Chapter 53  Dealing Better with the Past Imperfect

Part II - GIVING ZEST TO OUR SENTENCES

Section 1 - Crafting More Readable Sentences

Chapter 54  Using Noun Omission to Avoid Repetition
Chapter 55  Using Repeated Action and Sequence Words
Chapter 56  Using Demonstrative Reference Words
Chapter 57  Using Broader Meaning and Summary Words
Chapter 58  Using Synonyms to Enliven Prose
Chapter 59  Using Relative Pronouns as Reference Words
Chapter 60  The Usefulness of Resumptive Modifiers
Chapter 61  The Magic That Resumptive Modifiers Can Do
Chapter 62  The Usefulness of Summative Modifiers
Chapter 63  Crafting More Elegant Prose with Free Modifiers
Chapter 64  Making Good Use of Free Relative Clauses
Chapter 65  Three Semantic Brides All in a Row

Section 2 - Varying Sentence Patterns for Emphasis

Chapter 66  In Defense of the Passive Voice
Chapter 67  When Even the Passive Voice Isn’t Enough
Chapter 68  Crafting Our Sentences to Their Context
Chapter 69  Using Extraposition for Emphasis
Chapter 70  The Virtue of Elliptical Constructions
Chapter 71  Using Inversion for Smooth Transitions
Chapter 72  Some Pragmatic Uses for Inverted Sentences
Chapter 73  Even More Pragmatic Uses of Inversion
Chapter 74  Using Inversion for Stronger Emphasis
Chapter 75  Some Baffling Aspects of Inverted Sentences
Chapter 76  Better Ways of Handling Equative Constructions
Chapter 77  The Mood and Attitude of Verbs
Chapter 78  The Subjunctive and Its Functions
Chapter 79  Simpler Alternatives for the Subjunctive
Chapter 80  Playing Boldly with Sentences
Chapter 81  The Periodic Sentence and Its Virtues

Section 3 - Aiming for Parallelism

Chapter 82  Parallelism as a Mark of Good Writing
Chapter 83  Setting Our Thoughts in Parallel
Chapter 84  Sustaining Parallel Patterns All the Way
Chapter 85  Specific Applications of the Parallelism Rules
Chapter 86  Harnessing Parallelism for Structural Balance
Chapter 87  Pursuing Parallelism Beyond the Sentence Level

Part III - MAKING EFFECTIVE PARAGRAPH TRANSITIONS

Chapter 88  Making Effective Paragraph Transitions
Chapter 89  Extrinsic and Intrinsic Paragraph Transitions
Chapter 90  ‘It’, ‘Such’, and ‘There’ as Paragraph Transitions
Chapter 91  Using Deep-Hook Paragraph Transitions

Part IV - MATTERS OF SEMANTICS

Chapter 92  When Notion and Grammar Disagree
Chapter 93  More Subject-Verb Agreement Quandaries
Chapter 94  Dealing with Various Levels of Intransitivity
Chapter 95  How Causative and Factitive Verbs Work
Chapter 96  Helping Intransitives Surmount their Handicap
Chapter 97  When the Object is the Doer Itself
Chapter 98  Making Nominalization Work for Our Prose
Chapter 99  The Noun-to-Verb Conversion Syndrome
Chapter 100  Reducing Adjective Clauses for Conciseness
Chapter 101  Reducing Adverb Clauses for Brevity
Chapter 102  Hyphenating for Clarity
Chapter 103  The Perils of Using Back-Formations
Chapter 104  Using Comparison to Clarify Things

Part V - MATTERS OF USAGE

Chapter 105  ‘That’ and Its Many Grammatical Uses
Chapter 106  The Misuses of ‘That’, “Which’, and ‘Who’
Chapter 107  Using “That” Solely as a Subordinator
Chapter 108  When ‘That’ Assumes the Role of ‘Who’
Chapter 109  The Proper Ways of Using ‘However’
Chapter 110  Dysfunctional Placements of ‘However’
Chapter 111  Choosing ‘Between’ and ‘Among’
Chapter 112  ‘Used to’ and Other Grammar Puzzlers
Chapter 113  The Grammar of Indirect Questions
Chapter 114  Saying Our Tag Questions Right
Chapter 115  Departures from the Tag-Question Rules
Chapter 116  Forming Negative Sentences Correctly
Chapter 117  Excessive Negation and Its Dangers
Chapter 118  When ‘Only’ Goes Haywire
Chapter 119  Choosing the Correct Modifiers
Chapter 120  Reining in Those Footloose Modifiers
Chapter 121  Quick Quiz on Wayward Modifiers

Part VI - MATTERS OF STYLE

Section 1 - Euphony, Tone, and Voice

Chapter 122  Aiming for Euphony in Our Prose
Chapter 123  The Wonderful Thing Called Voice
Chapter 124  Giving a Touch of Authority to Our Prose
Chapter 125  Giving Ourselves the Power of Certitude
Chapter 126  When Saying It Once Isn’t Enough

Section 2 - Style Guide for the Printed Page

Chapter 127  A Style Guide for Writing in English
Chapter 128  Dealing with Quotations and Attributions
Chapter 129  The Grammar of Numbers and Time

Part VII - MATTERS OF LANGUAGE

Chapter 130  Looking More Closely at Our Dictionaries
Chapter 131  The Need to Know the English Idioms
Chapter 132  The Five Categories of English Idioms
Chapter 133  The Language of Science
Chapter 134  Language as Alphabet Soup
Chapter 135  Using Nondiscriminatory Language
Chapter 136  The Perils of Sweeping Generalizations

Part VIII - THE NEED FOR SELF-EDITING

Chapter 137  Editing Oneself
Chapter 138  Keeping English Prose Trim and Slim
Chapter 139  More Ways to Get Rid of Clutter
Chapter 140  The Age of Imprecision

Part IX - CONVERSATIONS

Chapter 141  Do Kingfishers Eat Butter?
Chapter 142  When Educators Befuddle
Chapter 143  A Serious Bad-Grammar Syndrome
Chapter 144  The Importance of Grammar-Perfect English
Chapter 145  The Real Score About Valentine’s Day

Part X - REFLECTIONS

Chapter 146  The Days of Our Lives
Chapter 147  Teaching Our Children to Think Logically
Chapter 148  The Evil that Ignorance and Incompetence Can Do
Chapter 149  Intelligence as a Quality of the Mind
Chapter 150  Too Many Good Books to Read
Chapter 151  The Strength of Materials and People’s Folly
Chapter 152  At a Loss for Words
Chapter 153  Where in the World Has Filipino Gone
Chapter 154  The World in 854 Words
Chapter 155  The Wealth of Our Vocabulary

 

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