Introduction. 1. The Great Subject-Predicate Divide. 2. All Types of Verbs: Beyond "Action". 3. Verb Forms Telling Time (and More). 4. Subjects and Verbs Agreeing. 5. Nouns and Their Determiners. 6. Objects and Complements. 7. Verb Transitivity. 8. The Subjunctive: In the Right Mood. 9. The Passive (and Active) Structure: Watch Your Voice. 10. The Case of Pronouns. 11. Adjectives and Adverbs Modifying. 12. Prepositional Phrases and Verb Particles. 13. Conjunctions at Junctions. 14. Relative Clauses (and More Clauses and Phrases). 15. Misaligned Modifiers. 16. Commas: More Than Pauses. 17. Apostrophes: Dueling Functions. 18. Applying the Knowledge. Appendices: Further Reading. Answer Key to Chapter Questions. Cheat Sheet Tables. Glossary
Biography
Susan J. Behrens is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Marymount Manhattan College, and an associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. She is co-editor of Language in the Real World with Judith A. Parker (Routledge, 2010).
"Behren's book clearly shows that the study of language should not be a 'joyless censoriousness' (Dick Veit's expression) but an inquiry into language questions we encounter daily in writing, ranging from syntactic issues to punctuation concerns... [Her] linguistic training is evident throughout." - The ATEG Journal
