Punctuation has been described as ‘a courtesy designed to help readers understand a story without stumbling’. Included in this essential guide are:

– a Victorian schoolmistress’s 10 Golden Rules Rules of Punctuation

– how to deal with capitalisation, full stops and commas

– mastery of colons, parentheses, dashes, hyohen hassle, questions, exclamations and apostrophes

– the ultimate punctuation test

– witty cartoons by Hunt Emerson

Can you learn how to improve your writing skills? Can the art of good writing be taught? Despite what you might feel, the answer is yes – you can be taught. Everyone is capable of enhancing their powers of written communication simply by learning and practising the basic principles of clear, concise and coherent writing: planning, preparation and revision. Using this book, your confidence will grow as you begin to apprecaite that the English language is not a fearsome book of rules but an unrivalled communications tool that you can learn to use with the familiar ease of a knife and fork. The basic principle of this incredibly useful book is that ‘clarity begins at home’: say what you mean and you stand a better chance of getting what you want!

Picking up a book on grammar takes courage, but the learner can take heart from the fact that many of the great writers, including Charlotte Bronte, were hopeless at grammar at school. Her teachers complained that she ‘knew nothing of grammar’, and could read only ‘tolerably’ and write ‘indifferently’. Yet though learning and obeying the rules of grammar won’t automatically bestow the grace and excellence of a Bronte on your writing, learning how written language works will certainly improve your communication skills, step by practical step. The guide features:

– the thirteen gremlins of grammar, from apostrophes to verbs

– the point of sentence construction

– the writing of good English

– witty cartoons by Hunt Emerson