This reference guide presents detailed information about current English usage with emphasis on both formal and informal written language. The practical needs of advanced learners of English as a second language are considered and there is heavy concentration on grammatical usages that continue to trouble foreign students: articles, verb forms, prepositions, idioms, and such complex structures as dependent clauses, verbal constructions, and word order. The first eight chapters on parts of speech have been influenced by concepts from structural linguistics. Function serves as the basic criterion for classifying parts of speech. Chapters 10 to 12 on clauses and verbal constructions are based on the transformational theory that most comple syntactic structures are derived from simple basic sentences. (Author/VM)