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Grammar

I have written three books about grammar. They are mostly information you cannot find anywhere else -- why else would I write them? You could read them to become a better writer, or to learn more about the English Language.

Modern Punctuation and Grammar: Tools not Rules. This book is meant to change how you think about grammar. It discusses the punctuation and grammar tools you can use to create the reading experience you want. It is modern and covers the information you would not find in a grammar book or a style book.

For example, the first chapter is on using fragments well. You would be hard-pressed to find, any where else, more than a sentence about fragments. And that sentence would be negative. Pretty much all of my chapters are like that.

The next-to-last chapter is the grammar of writing action scenes. Honestly, I know of no book explaining how you can change your grammar depending on the type of scene. Or even on the topic of moody grammar.

The. This is a book about the articles and determiners in the English language. I suspect you cannot understand English until you read this book. For example, the main function of the word a in English is not what everyone says. Or, the cannot be defined well without considering domains of communication, an idea I had to create to understand the.

It would be for:

  1. ESL. The definitions of the articles and determiners you can find elsewhere are wrong. That doesn't bother us native English speakers, because we ignore them. You don't have that luxury -- you need this book to understand them.
  2. Writers. If you are a native English speaker, you mostly use the determiners well. You would have to care alot about writing well to read this book.
  3. Language. This is like crawling inside the machine and seeing how the pieces work.

Simple Phrase Grammar: The Hidden Grammar of English. What I call Simple Phrase Grammar is actually the absence of rules, but I describe the principles for using it well. This is a way of writing an author might use, but it also explores principles of good writing.

And it's an exploration of the English language and how it actually works. That's useful for writers, and essential for linguists.

       My website on cutting edge grammar is here.

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