1st Edition

The Basics of English Usage

By Wynford Hicks Copyright 2009
192 Pages
by Routledge

192 Pages
by Routledge

192 Pages
by Routledge

Should I say "He is taller than I" or "He is taller than me?" Do you spell it "blond" or "blonde"? If you’ve ever been stopped in your tracks by questions like these, then this book is for you. A complete pocket guide to the ins and outs of everyday English, The Basics of English Usage will tell you all you need to know about such topics as: correct spelling good... Read more

1 Introduction -- 2 Spelling -- Words people get wrong -- Confusions -- I before e -- Plurals -- Suffixes -- American spelling -- Program/programme -- Spelling of French words -- 2 Grammar and style -- 3 Problem words -- 4 Punctuation -- Accents, accent marks, diacritics -- Apostrophe -- Asterisk, star -- Bold -- Brackets, round, square, angle, brace -- Bullet point, blob -- Capitals, caps, upper case -- Caret -- Colon -- Comma -- Dagger, obelisk -- Dash -- Ditto marks -- Dots, ellipsis, leader dots -- Exclamation mark, screamer, shriek -- Full stop, full point, period -- Hash -- Hyphen -- Italics -- Numbers, fractions, dates -- Paragraph break -- Question mark, query -- Quote marks, quotes, inverted commas -- Semicolon -- Slash, bar, diagonal, oblique, shilling mark, solidus, stroke, virgule -- Underlining -- Further reading.

Biography

Wynford Hicks is a freelance journalist and editorial trainer.  He has worked as a reporter, subeditor, feature writer, editor and editorial consultant on magazines, newspapers and books.  He is the author of Quite Literally and English for Journalists, now in its third edition.