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    Correct Me If I'm Wrong: Getting Your Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Right!
    Correct Me If I'm Wrong: Getting Your Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Right!
    Correct Me If I'm Wrong: Getting Your Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Right!
    Ebook230 pages2 hours

    Correct Me If I'm Wrong: Getting Your Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Right!

    By Arlene Miller

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    About this ebook

    Correct Me If I'm Wrong is an easy-to-use guide to the most common problems in grammar, punctuation, and word usage. You will easily find what you are looking for, since the topics are presented in alphabetical order. There is also a complete table of contents and index. Perfect for students from 6th grade through adult, professionals, writers, and anyone who wants to write better. Correct Me If I'm Wrong makes a perfect accompaniment to The Best Little Grammar Book Ever, also written by Arlene Miller and being used in several schools and colleges.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 1, 2012
    ISBN9780984331642
    Correct Me If I'm Wrong: Getting Your Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage Right!
    Author

    Arlene Miller

    Arlene Miller, The Grammar Diva, is the  author of nine grammar books, a self-publishing book, and a novel: The Best Little Grammar Book Ever, first and second editions The Best Little Grammar Workbook Ever The Best Little Grammar Collection Ever Does Your Flamingo Flamenco? Fifty Shades of Grammar Correct Me If I'm Wrong The Great Grammar Cheat Sheet Beyond Worksheets  The Best Grammar Workbook Ever I Wrote a Book: Now What? The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Self-Publishing Four College Girls and a Purple Boa Her grammar books are used by schools and colleges. The Best Little Grammar Book Ever won Best Reference Book from the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association in 2011. The Best Grammar Workbook Ever won honorable mention at the New York Book Festival in 2016. And Fifty Shades of Grammar won Best Book Runner Up in 2016 from the Bay Area Independent Book Publishers Association. Arlene is from the Boston area, where she went to school and worked until 1993, when she and her family relocated to Sonoma County, California. She started her writing career as a newspaper reporter and editor before becoming a technical writer in the 1980s. She has won two awards of excellence from the Society of Technical Writers. More recently, Ms. Miller has been a freelance book editor and blogger. She also taught for the California public schools for 11 years. Arlene holds a B.A. in English and Journalism and an M.A. in Humanities, as well as teaching and school administration credentials. She conducts grammar and writing workshops based on her book. And if you don't believe that grammar can be humorous and entertaining, listen to one of her grammar talks! She is also an accomplished tap dancer and an award-winning poet. She has two grown children and currently lives in beautiful wine country, California. See her website at www.bigwords101.com for more information or to set up a workshop. Sign up to receive the weekly Grammar Diva Blog Post and get a free grammar mini-book download.

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      Book preview

      Correct Me If I'm Wrong - Arlene Miller

      books.

      Introduction: A Short Grammar Refresher

      This is by no means a complete course in grammar, but instead a brief overview of the parts of speech and the structure of sentences.

      The Parts of Speech: The Building Blocks

      Every word belongs to one or more parts of speech. Parts of speech indicate the word’s function, what it does. Here are the parts of speech:

      1.  Noun: Person, place, thing, or idea

      2.  Pronoun: Takes the place of a noun (or another pronoun)

      3.  Verb: Action word or state of being

      4.  Adjective: Describes a noun, pronoun, or another adjective

      5.  Adverb: Describes a verb, adjective, or other adverb

      6.  Preposition: Used in a phrase to show the relationship between it and a verb or noun

      7.  Conjunction: Joins words, phrases, clauses, or sentences

      8.  Interjection: Expresses emotion

      9.  Articles: the words a, an, and the—they are really adjectives

      The Simple Sentence

      A sentence is a complete thought. All you need to make a sentence is a subject and a verb. The subject is always a noun or a pronoun. Here are some examples of subjects and verbs, making a complete sentence:

      Obviously, most sentences are quite a bit longer than that! There are many things we can add to sentences. We can add direct objects. Objects are always nouns or pronouns, just like subjects. However, the subject is usually doing the action of the verb; the object is receiving the action of the verb. If you ask what or who about the verb, you will find the direct object. Note that not all sentences have a direct object.

      We can also add indirect objects, also nouns or pronouns.

      We can add adjectives and adverbs for more interesting sentences.

      We can add conjunctions to connect words.

      If we need excitement, we can use interjections.

      Phrases

      Phrases are small groups of related words that we can add to sentences. Phrases can contain nouns or verbs, but they never contain both a subject and a verb. There are several types of phrases.

      1.  Prepositional phrases start with a preposition and end with a noun or pronoun. They often tell where, when, or what kind; they can describe a noun or a verb. Sometimes you can put a prepositional phrase at the beginning of a sentence; other times, the phrase goes near the word it modifies.

      2.  Participial phrases contain participles, which are verb forms that serve as adjectives. A present participle ends with -ing; a past participle takes the past tense form of the verb. Because the verb really is no longer a verb, a participle is called a verbal.

      3.  Appositive phrases describe nouns or pronouns that come directly before the

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