Grammar Secrets

Published by Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Westerhill Road

Bishopbriggs

Glasgow

G64 2QT

First Edition 2014

© Caroline Taggart 2014

eBook Edition © August 2014 ISBN 978-0-00-759131-2

Version: 2014-09-08

www.harpercollins.co.uk

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Author

Caroline Taggart

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

About the author

Grammar Secrets

To begin at the beginning …

Multi-tasking

Is it a noun? Is it a verb?

Vowels and consonants

Less or fewer?

More about nouns: how to treat them properly

All in it together

My country, right or wrong

Mr Bun, the baker

One a penny, two a penny

A classical interlude

More foreign plurals

Greater than the sum of its parts?

Me or I?

Comparing like with like

Person is a technical term

Speaking for myself

Simple verbal organization

Do it to me

Take it as a compliment (or perhaps a complement)?

Bits and pieces

To infinity and beyond

To boldly split …

Running down the road …

Should have known better

Can and may

Get your claws into that

Speaking of subordinate clauses …

So that was a clause …

I couldn’t agree more

We all agree too …

An either/or situation

All or nothing

Functioning as singular

Let’s see how it pans out

Agree to disagree

Do you hear voices?

I object

Are you calling me a liar?

Try to understand

The boy done good

There’s no comparison

Superlatives

Beware overkill …

A far, far better thing

Misplaced modifiers

Only

Handle with care

Between you and me

Which preposition?

What should you end a sentence with?

Not only … but also

Which conjunction?

An hotel with a view?

Punctuation

When all is said and done

Halfway houses

Pausing for thought

Restriction or no restriction

More commas

Cannibal commas

When a comma won’t do

Cutting a dash …

A tiny link in a chain

One word or two?

May I quote you on that?

Quotes within quotes

In exclamatory style

It’s all in the report

The apostrophe – rule one

The apostrophe – rule two

More about apostrophes

A final rule regarding apostrophes

Your place or mine?

It’s or its?

Another place where you don’t need an apostrophe …

… and an odd place where you do

Some grammatical confusions

A top ten of confusables

Say that again … and again

Just the one …

No, no, no …

Some further reading

About the Publisher

Introduction

Let me let you in on a secret. Or, in fact, several dozen of them. Some of them are the absolute basics of grammar, some are subtleties and a few are ways of working round a problem when the correct answer is tricky. These Grammar Secrets are what this book is all about. It points out a number of common errors and explains why they are wrong, and it tells us when we need to be meticulous and what we can be a bit more relaxed about.

It’s a sad fact that lots of us are scared of grammar, and for a very good reason: we were never taught it. At some point in the twentieth century, some bright spark decided that we didn’t need to study our own language, so grammar disappeared from the school curriculum. It led to a whole generation having a vague feeling that The boy done good wasn’t quite right, without understanding why, and to another generation being in danger of not thinking there was anything wrong with it at all.

This is, to put it mildly, a shame. It’s a shame because language, used well, is beautiful. It’s the reason we admire the plays of Shakespeare and Stoppard, read the novels of Austen and Tolkien, or laugh at Gavin and Stacey and The Simpsons. Language, used well, is also effective. It tells people what we mean without our having to say, ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

This may not matter much on a day-to-day basis, because people we are chatting to – in person, online and in texts – probably do know what we mean. But it does matter when we come to write down something that is longer than 140 characters or speak to someone in a formal setting. It matters in school projects, job applications, business reports, presentations, legal documents and much more. It matters because, rightly or wrongly, people judge us on the way we speak and write. Given that, as the saying goes, we have only one chance to make a first impression, we need to be able to make that impression clearly, accurately and unambiguously.

Those are a