Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Modern English Grammar English 2126		Contact Form

Usage Issues in Modern English

! New Developments: Dear In my spare time I will be adding significant new materials to the Modern English Grammar site, including interactive, self-scoring quizzes to help you assess your mastery of the materials here, and a new section (outlined here) discussing and explaining some of the usage problems associated with modern English. These materials will go online as I develop them. Please feel free to make suggestions about what you would like to see included here.

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1. Goals and aims of this section
2. What do we mean by grammar?
   1. Pedagogical grammars
      1. School grammars
      2. Remedial grammars
      3. Other therapeutic grammars
   2. Scholarly grammars, linguistics, and language study
   3. Prescriptive and descriptive grammar
3. Usage v. grammar
4. Rules and "rules"
   1. "But it's in Webster's!" — Authorities and language disputes
   2. Grammatical usage v. style advice
5. The origins of usage problems
   1. Language changes over time
   2. Language changes over space
   3. Language changes over mode of transmission
   4. On the Intelligence of Human Error
6. Standards in English
7. Varieties of English
   1. Dialect Variation
      1. National
      2. Regional
      3. Social
      4. Temporal
   2. Register (and Genre) Variation
      1. Field
      2. Tenor
      3. Mode
8. Sentence structure problems
   1. The relationship between sentence structure problems and punctuation
   2. Clause and sentence boundaries
      1. Recognizing clause boundaries
      2. Recognizing sentences
   3. Comma splice (also known as comma faults)
   4. Run-on sentences (also known as fused sentences)
   5. Sentence fragments
9. Punctuation
10. Agreement problems
    1. Subject and verb
    2. Pronoun and antecedent
    3. Other problems
       1. Heads and modifiers
       2. Heads and determiners
11. Case problems
    1. Case problems with nouns
       1. Genitive case and apostrophe
    2. Case problems with pronouns
       1. Confusion of subject and object forms of pronouns
       2. Confusion of the object and and genitive
12. Commonly confused and misused words — a compendium
13. Levels of formality
    1. Writing, style, and usage
14. Emphasis, rhythm, clarity: how understanding grammar can improve writing and writing style
    1. Audience awareness
    2. Contextual appropriateness
    3. Writing improvement
       1. Using our knowledge of the grammar to improve writing style
       2. Sustaining the longer sentence
          1. End-focus
          2. End-weight
          3. Balance
          4. Rhythm and emphasis
    4. Appropriate emphasis
       1. Theme and rheme
       2. Given and new
15. Usage and abusage
16. The decline and death of the English language

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