Full Description
A Writer's Grammar is a lively, engaging, and writing-intensive introduction to grammar from a rhetorical and stylistic perspective. A Writer's Grammar makes clear and interesting the relationship between good writing and grammatical knowledge. Presenting grammatical concepts in a hierarchical manner, it builds logically from basic elements to more advanced concepts, showing how grammar affects a writer's style. Writing instruction within each section gives students guided practice to help them apply their knowledge and integrate a new and deeper understanding of language.
Contents
Introduction. Acknowledgements. 1. The Shape of ThingsPatterns. Transitive Patterns.Linking Patterns.The Intransitive Pattern.The Big Picture: Looking at All the Patterns.2. Naming the Parts, 1: Form Classes, Noun Clusters. Form Classes.Summing Up: Noun Clusters.3. Naming the Parts, 2: Form Classes, Verb Clusters, Structure Words. Verbs: The Heart of the Sentence.Structure Words.Nominal versus Verbal: A Rhetorical Observation.Summing Up.4. Patterns Transformed. Negative Transformations.Question Transformations.Passive Transformations.Expletive Transformation.Emphatic Transformations.Summing Up.5. Clustering, Compounding, Verbals, and Nominative Absolutes. Compound Sentence Elements.Verbals.Nominative Absolutes.Looking at Passages for Style.6. Joining and Combining Patterns and Other Elements. Distinguishing Phrases and Clauses.Distinguishing Independent Clauses and Dependent Clauses.Creating Compound Sentences.Creating Complex Sentences.Creating Combination or Compound-Complex Sentences.Reviewing Patterns and Combinations.Looking Ahead.7. From Grammar to Style: Rhetorical Strategies and Figures. Parallelism.Antithesis.Anastrophe.Apposition.Parenthesis.Ellipsis.Asyndeton.Polysyndeton.Assonance and Alliteration.Anaphora.Epistrophe.Epanalepsis.Anadiplosis.Antimetabole.Onomatopoeia.Virtual Sentence.8. A Dozen Prose Passages: Reading for Grammatical Understanding. Gerald Early on Muhammad Ali.Oliver Sacks, from "A Leg to Stand On."Rhonda White's Autobiography.Mary Roach and the Common Cold.Charles McGrath: Thinking About Internet Time.Thomas Paine's "The Crisis:" Enjoining Patriots.Molly Ivins on America.Kim Hendon on Learning to Read in a Private Religious School.Wilbert Rideau: Why Prisons Don't Work.John Irving's Personal History: "Slipped Away."George Orwell, "Marrakech."Anne Bradstreet, a 17th Century "Meditation, Divine and Moral."9. A Punctuation Gallery. External Punctuation.Internal Punctuation.Glossary.
