The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (2 page)

First and foremost, thanks must go to the late Jane Straus for her vision and persistence in creating a reference guide and workbook that is popular and easy to understand. We could not have succeeded in updating this book without the assistance of Marjorie McAneny at Jossey-Bass and literary agent Cathy Fowler, both of whom steadfastly believed in the book's value. We also thank Zoe Kaufman, Jojo Ortiz, and Patti Clements, for their contributions to the quizzes; the thousands of loyal readers and viewers of the
GrammarBook.com
website who, by offering valuable input daily, have helped shape the rules, examples, and quizzes; and Gary Klehr, for helping name the book many years ago.

This book is dedicated to my brilliant wife, Jane Straus. She was a multitalented woman with boundless energy and a natural gift for clarifying all matters complex. She put her heart and soul into everything she undertook. She was taken from us far too soon
.

—LESTER KAUFMAN

Jane Straus
(1954–2011) was an educator, life coach, and best-selling author. To prepare for a job teaching English to employees of the state of California in 1975, Straus scoured the library for materials that conveyed the rules of English in plain English. Finding no such resources, she wrote the rules her own way, made up exercises, ran off some copies, and hoped for the best.

The class was a hit. More and more state employees demanded that they get an equal opportunity to benefit from Straus's no-nonsense instruction in English grammar and usage. She continued to refine her materials, eventually turning them into
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
.

When the Internet was born, she launched a website,
GrammarBook.com
, which has helped millions of people all over the world improve their English grammar. Straus became a sought-after speaker in the fields of grammar, public speaking, and life coaching. Her other book is
Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life
(Jossey-Bass, 2005).

Lester Kaufman
is the publisher of
GrammarBook.com
. A lifelong public servant, he served first in the Peace Corps, and eventually completed the final years of his federal career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He married Jane Straus in 1987.

After his retirement from the EPA, Kaufman began assisting with the operation of Straus's fledgling website and helped edit previous editions of
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
.

Following Jane Straus's untimely passing in early 2011, Kaufman assumed management of
GrammarBook.com
, which features an informative and entertaining weekly newsletter that encourages readers to ask grammar questions and offer their views on the state of twenty-first-century English.

Tom Stern
is a freelance writer and editor. After leaving a career in the music business in 1992, he became a copyeditor-reporter-critic, eventually working for a number of San Francisco Bay Area periodicals. In 2011, his twice-monthly grammar column for a Marin County newspaper chain placed first in the California Newspaper Publishers Association's Better Newspapers Contest.

Now in its eleventh edition,
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
will help you write and speak with confidence. You don't have to be an English major to understand grammar and punctuation. You just need rules and guidelines that are easy to understand, with real-world examples.

Whether you are an instructor teaching students the rules of English or a student, executive, professional writer, or avid blogger honing your grammar and punctuation skills, this book will help you zip through tests (including the SAT), reports, essays, letters, e-mails, and résumés. It will help you (and your writing) impress your teachers, your clients, and other readers.

Every generation of English scholars despairs because the language always seems to be at a crisis point. But it is undeniable that everywhere one looks nowadays, the principles in this book are casually and cavalierly violated.

The Blue Book
will prove to be a valuable tool for teachers and students in achieving the goals of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Studying the chapters and working through the quizzes will provide students of all ages with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed beyond high school—in college and in the workplace. Students will learn how to use formal English in their writing and speaking and how to better express themselves through language. We also recommend reading the works of great writers to experience firsthand the art and beauty of effective communication.

This book is logical, self-paced, and fun to use, with scores of interesting and challenging quizzes that you may photocopy to your heart's content. Best of all, you can look forward to instant gratification, because the answers to the quizzes are included.

Throughout the text, certain terms have been set in boldface type (for instance, at the beginning of Chapter One,
noun, common nouns, proper nouns
). Due to space and other considerations, we could not always explore these linguistic terms as thoroughly as we might have wished. Readers are strongly urged to look further into these terms on their own. We also recommend that those who are serious about improving their English grammar always keep a dictionary close by and use it assiduously.

If you don't have time to research several leading reference books to figure out where the next comma should go or whether to write
who
or
whom
, you will find
The Blue Book
to be a pleasure to use. Dedicated to eliminating unnecessary jargon, it highlights the most important grammar, punctuation, and capitalization rules and guidelines and clarifies some of the language's most confusing and confounding words.

In Chapter One, “Grammar,” you will learn how to find nouns, verbs, and subjects and make sure they agree with one another. Next you will learn about clauses and phrases, the keys to understanding sentence structure. Then, on to pronoun usage, so that you will know whether to write
I
or
me, he
or
him, who
or
whom
, etc. From there, in the “Adjectives and Adverbs” section, you will discover why some words have -
ly
added to them, and why you must say, “She did well on the test,” rather than “She did good on the test.” After that, you will breeze through prepositions, learning some surprising rules, and we will debunk at least one myth. (
Hint
: Is it safe to ask, “What are you talking about?” or must we ask, “About what are you talking?”)

The “Effective Writing” section of Chapter One will give you helpful tips for constructing sentences and paragraphs that flow gracefully, making it easier to write quickly and well.

Chapter Two, “Punctuation,” takes on all the usual suspects: periods, commas, semicolons, colons, quotation marks, parentheses and brackets, apostrophes, hyphens, dashes, ellipses, question marks, and exclamation points. The best part about this and other chapters is that you will find an abundance of examples that you run across every day.

Then comes Chapter Three, “Capitalization,” in which you will get your most vexing questions answered, learning which words to capitalize in a title and when to capitalize job titles, such as
president
or
director
.

In Chapter Four, “Writing Numbers,” you will learn the importance of consistency when using numerals or writing out numbers. You will also learn how to write fractions and large numbers.

After that, you will enjoy spending time reading all about
affect
vs.
effect, lay
vs.
lie, their
vs.
there
vs.
they're
, and
its
vs.
it's
in Chapter Five, “Confusing Words and Homonyms.” We have provided hundreds of words and phrases for you in this chapter, so you will never again have to be confused by the differences between
farther
and
further, continual
and
continuous, flaunt
and
flout, tortuous
and
torturous
, and all the rest of the trickiest and most commonly misused words and phrases in the English language.

Promise not to skip the quizzes, pretests, or mastery tests in Chapter Six. The more you practice, the more confident you will become. Once you get over any fears about test taking, we think you will find the quizzes both enjoyable and challenging. You will find the answers in Chapter Seven.

Please visit
www.GrammarBook.com
, where you will find all the quizzes in the book in a multiple-choice, interactive format. If you are a teacher or are really jazzed about improving your English skills, on the website you will also find

• Hundreds of additional downloadable, interactive quizzes in the “Subscription” area
  
• Dozens of free one-minute videos by Jane Straus on English language usage
  
• All the rules and examples you see in the book
  
• A sign-up box on the home page for our free weekly e-newsletter with tips and articles
  
• Our blog
  
• Recommendations for further reading and study
  

The point of grammar proficiency is to be clear and direct, and to avoid misunderstanding. We hope you will come away from this book with this mantra: “Think before you write.” Be sure every sentence conveys what you mean, with no possibility of ambiguity or inadvertent meaninglessness.

That being said, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

We hope you find
The Blue Book
to be both enjoyable and invaluable.

Definitions

• A
  noun
  is a word or set of words for a person, place, thing, or idea. A noun of more than one word (
  tennis court, gas station
  ) is called a
  compound noun
  .
  

There are
common nouns
and
proper nouns
. Common nouns are words for a general class of people, places, things, and ideas (
man, city, award, honesty
). They are not capitalized. Proper nouns are always capitalized. They name specific people, places, and things (
Joe, Chicago, Academy Award
).

For more on nouns, see Chapter Two, “Apostrophes,” Rules 2a through 2e.

• A
  verb
  is a word or set of words that shows action (
  runs, is going, has been painting
  ); feeling (
  loves, envies
  ); or state of being (
  am, are, is, have been, was, seem
  ).
  

State-of-being verbs are called
linking verbs
. They include all forms of the verb
to be
, plus such words as
look, feel, appear, act, go
, followed by an adjective. (See the “Adjectives and Adverbs” section later in this chapter.)

Verbs often consist of more than one word. For instance,
had been breaking down
is a four-word verb. It has a two-word main verb,
breaking down
(also called a
phrasal verb
), and two
helping verbs
(
had
and
been
). Helping verbs are so named because they help clarify the intended meaning.

Many verbs can function as helping verbs, including
is, shall, must, do, has, can, keep, get, start, help
, etc.

• A
  subject
  is the noun, pronoun (see the “Pronouns” section later in this chapter), or set of words that performs the verb.