Describes calls to a grammar hot line about usage, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Concludes that many people besides educators and professional writers care about exact and accurate language usage. (EL)

This grammar handbook emphasizes formal written usage, offering clues to help with comprehension. The seven sections discuss: (1) "Nouns" (e.g., most nouns can follow "the," and possessives can show more than possession); (2) "Pronouns" (e.g., pronouns come in small groups, and some pronouns defy logic); (3) "Verbs" (e.g., some plural subjects…

Phonological rules based on "stress-terminal pattern" (the principle that a phonological phrase has one primary stress and one terminal juncture requiring a mark of punctuation) can be used to improve punctuation in composition. These rules require that the writer be able to speak sentences at a normal pace with intonation appropriate to the…

Just as a reader must bring an experiential conceptual background to the printed page, so must he bring an ability to recognize the graphic cues that signal meaning. The graphic cues or structural meaning works as a system the description of which can be outlined in three parts as the vocabulary, the structure, and the sound. What has been…

In order to determine if there is a significant difference in the capitalization skills, punctuation skills, and word usage and sentence structure recognition skills of students who have had one year of shorthand instruction, two sample groups (shorthand and non-shorthand) were obtained from three English populations (no English or nongrammar…

Written for the third- and fourth-grade levels, this workbook gives students practice in using context clues and reading comprehension to apply punctuation rules, as well as in carefully reading and following directions. Noting that the activities are based on the idea that punctuation is necessary to make written communication clear, the…

This concluding article in a series concerning the use of the comma in Spanish gives specific examples of its use from Spanish literature. Concluding remarks outline the major purposes of the comma. (NCR)

The punctuation system presented in this paper has explanatory power insofar as it explains how good writers punctuate. The paper notes that good writers have learned, through reading, the differences among a hierarchy of marks and acquired a sense of independent clauses that allows them to use the hierarchy, along with a reader-sensitive notion…

Intended for use by students at any level above grade one, this practice book is designed to familiarize students with the basic elements of a sentence. The practice book then proceeds to nouns and verbs, and then to capitalization and punctuation. The book is self-paced so that students may use it independently, and answers are provided for…

This workbook is designed as an introduction to the "Editor in Chief" series, which reinforces the rules of written English. In this workbook, student first review the rules of grammar and mechanics using multiple-choice questions; then the students learn to apply these rules in context by editing stories in a variety of formats. This "Beginning"…

Punctuation in its elocutionary function serves as a set of instructions for reading aloud. In its syntactic function, it serves to convey meaning. Results of a study indicated that many people retain the belief in the elocutionary purpose of punctuation and are insensitive to its syntactic function. (JD)

Using straightforward, easy-to-understand language, this handbook of English provides hundreds of examples to illustrate in specific detail what is proper in all areas of English grammar, style, and writing. The handbook provides learning exercises at the end of every chapter for a thorough review of the concepts covered in the chapter. The first…

Intended for use by students at any level above grade 2, this practice book helps students recognize and correct sentence fragments, edit sentences for subject-verb agreement, use nouns and pronouns correctly, use present and past tense, and capitalize and punctuate sentences and abbreviations. The book also introduces students to the correct…

Most students today have been reared on television and have had only slight brushes with the parts of grammar. Nevertheless, a variety of sentence pattern exercises and sentence combining lessons based on the students' own writing can be used to augment, challenge and improve students' writing skills and vocabulary. In the first exercise, students…

Readers are "dumb" because they are not privy to the mind and intentions of the writer; and the failure of the unsuccessful writer is a failure to forecast what it is going to be like to be a dumb reader of the document. Sample sentences from students' writing illustrate the following types of writing problems, which force the reader to examine…