ixINTRODUCTION
Why should you study English? Do you speak and write English? That’s reason
enough. When you speak or write, you present yourself to others, and if you care at
all about how you’re perceived—and who doesn’t?—you care about how your use
of language represents you. Certainly, not all jobs depend exclusively upon writing
and speaking skills, but most do to some signifi cant extent. If you are in school,
your teachers have probably set a standard for written and spoken English.
As you begin English Grammar Demystifi ed, get ready for a different learning
experience. English Grammar Demystifi ed will help you better understand and use
the English language, but you will fi nd that this book takes a different approach
from the usual English improvement text. In the fi rst two parts of this book, you will
learn the basics of English grammar with a thorough overview of the parts of speech
and punctuation and capitalization rules. The third part of the book builds on these
skills, giving you sound advice on mastering proper sentence structure and refi ning
your writing. The fourth part covers important spelling and word usage skills.
In support of all of these concepts, you will also fi nd great emphasis on fi nding
common errors. In other words, this is not simply a grammar book. Rather, this
book identifi es where errors are most commonly made—so you can avoid them.
You may, for example, know the defi nition of a pronoun (i.e., a word that takes the
place of a noun), but you may not recognize one of the most common pronoun
errors. Read the following sentence:
Incorrect: Me and Tom work in the same offi ce.You know that me is a pronoun. It takes the place of someone’s name, so you con-
clude that it should be used as half of the subject of the sentence. Why is it incorrect
in this context? In Chapters 2 and 3, you will learn why it is incorrect, but beyond