Painless Grammar

by Elliott, Rebecca; Hamilton, Laurie

• ISBN13: 9780812097818
• ISBN10: 0812097815
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-07-01
• Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Inc

Summary

Most students and many teachers think of grammar books as being, at best, necessary evils--but here's a book that breaks free from the pattern and takes the boredom out of grammar. Written primarily for children on the middle-school level, this book mixes parts of speech and proper punctuation with healthy portions of humor, down-to-earth examples, and fun illustrations that will appeal to adolescents. While kids are learning painlessly about how to make verbs agree with their subjects and pronouns with their antecedents, they look at some of the wackier words in the English language and see how they are often misused. A final chapter gives basic instructions for editing, which the author calls a fancy word for cleaning up messy writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Chapter One: Parts of Speech	1	(66)
Noun Pointers	3	(11)
Pronoun Pointers	14	(9)
Verb Pointers	23	(16)
Adjective and Adverb Pointers	39	(12)
Conjunction Pointers	51	(4)
Preposition Pointers	55	(2)
Interjection Pointers	57	(10)
Chapter Two: Building and Punctuating Sentences	67	(86)
Making Sentences	69	(1)
Sentences, Fragments, Phrases, and Clauses	70	(6)
Road Signs: Punctuation	76	(56)
Highlights: Abbreviations, Numbers, Symbols, and Emphasis	132	(21)
Chapter Three: Agreement	153	(20)
Agreement Between Subject and Verb	155	(9)
Agreement Between Pronouns and Antecedents	164	(9)
Chapter Four: Words, Words, Words	173	(38)
Wacky Words We Love to Misuse	175	(25)
One Word or Two?	200	(1)
Confusing Pears	201	(10)
Chapter Five: Editing	211	(50)
The Top Goofs in Students' Writing	213	(32)
Getting It All Together: Editing a Paper	245	(16)
Index	261