Full Description
Grammar by Diagram, second edition is a book designed for anyone who wishes to improve grammatical understanding and skill. Using traditional sentence diagramming as a visual tool, the book explains how to expand simple sentences into compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, and how to employ verbals (infinitives, gerunds, and participles) and other structures for additional variety.
The text addresses the most frequent usage errors by explaining how to distinguish between adjectives and adverbs; how to avoid problems of pronoun case, agreement, and consistency; how to ensure that verbs will agree with their subjects and will be appropriate in terms of tense, aspect, voice, and mood; and how to phrase sentences to avoid errors in parallelism or placement of modifiers. Six appendices incorporate further exercises, a summary of key basics from the text, and supplemental material not included in the body of the text but useful for quick reference. This new edition includes additional exercises and has been revised and updated throughout.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Eight Parts of Speech
Chapter 2. Basic Sentence Patterns for Be and Linking Verbs
Chapter 3. Basic Sentence Patterns for Intransitive and Transitive Verbs
Chapter 4. Usage Problems Associated with Adjectives and Adverbs
Chapter 5. Combining and Expanding Patterns: Compound Structures
Chapter 6. Combining and Expanding Patterns: Complex Sentences with Noun Clauses
Chapter 7. Combining and Expanding Patterns: Complex Sentences with Adverb and Relative Clauses
Chapter 8. Usage Problems of Case, Agreement, and Consistency
Chapter 9. Verbs
Chapter 10. Verbals
Chapter 11. Usage Problems Associated with Verbs and Verbals
Chapter 12. Punctuation and Capitalization
Chapter 13. Sentence Transformations
Appendix 1: Additional Exercises (no answers provided)
Appendix 2: Verb Conjugations (See and Be)
Appendix 3: Irregular and Troublesome Verb Forms
Appendix 4: Summary of Clauses and Verbals
Appendix 5: Diagramming Summary
Appendix 6: Commonly Confused Words
Answer Key
Index
