Practical Grammar: A Canadian Writers' Resource demonstrates how learning the basics of grammar can improve the effectiveness of students' writing. It includes easy-to-understand explanations of important grammatical concepts, expert advice on how to avoid common problems, and a variety of helpful tips to improve writing style.

A Note to the Reader A Note to the Teacher Part I: Grammar Basics 1. Parts of Speech Nouns Pronouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs Prepositions Conjunctions Interactions Review Exercises 2. Sentence Structure Subjects and Predicates Phrases and Clauses Sentence Types Sentence Patterns Review Exercises 3. Verbs Revisited Person Tense Principal Pars of the Verb Participles Mood Verb Types Subjects, Objects, and Complements Active and Passive Voice Review Exercises Part II: Elementary Errors 4. Subject-Verb Agreement Reversed Sentence Order Words Between the Subject and Verb Relative Pronouns Linking Verbs Correlated Subjects Collective Nouns as Subjects Compound Subjects Plural Nouns Indefinite Pronouns Review Exercises 5. Pronouns--Antecedent Agreement and Pronoun Case Clear Pronoun Reference Agreement of Pronouns and Antecedent Pronoun Case Parting Tips on Pronoun Case Review Exercises 6. Diction and Danglers Diction Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers Fixing Danglers Review Exercises Part III: Points of Style 7. Parallelism and Faulty Constructions Parallelism Faulty Constructions Review Exercises 8. Punctuation Terminal Punctuation Internal Punctuation Review Exercises Writing Essentials 9. Writing Well: A Compendium of Tips Four Stages of Writing Top Twelve Writing Tips 10. Style and Documentation Answers to Review Exercises Glossary of Grammatical Terms Resource List Index

Maxine RuvinskySchool of Journalism, Thompson Rivers University