The Rinehart Guide To Grammar

This volume explores both historical and current issues in English usage guides or style manuals. Chapters look at how and why these guides are compiled, and by whom; what sort of advice they contain; how they differ from grammars and dictionaries; and how attitudes to usage have changed.

Many people find English grammar daunting: if you are one of them, then this is the book for you. The Complete Guide to Grammar is an indispensible guide for all native English speakers who were not taught formal grammar, and who have ever wondered about the correct use of a word or phrase. It is also an invaluable learning tool for students of English of lower intermediate standard and above. The book deals with each area of grammar in a concise, readable manner, providing relevant examples. Each topic is explained in a self-contained two-page section, highlighting mistakes commonly made within each area of grammar, and there is also a full glossary of grammatical terms indispensible to any intelligent discussion of grammar, together with a comprehensive index for ease of use. If you have ever hesitated to confidently split an infinitive, or wondered to whom you should address yourself, this book is for you!

Describing Prescriptivism provides a topical and thought-provoking analysis of linguistic prescriptivism in British and American English, from a historical as well as present-day perspective. Focusing on usage guides and usage problems, the book takes a three-fold approach to present an in-depth analysis of the topic, featuring: a detailed study of the advice provided in usage guides over the years; an authoritative comparison of this advice with actual usage as recorded in British and American corpora, including the HUGE (Hyper Usage Guide of English) database – developed specifically to enable this line of study – as well as more mainstream corpora such as COCA, COHA and the BNC; a close analysis of the attitudes to particular usage problems among the general public, based on surveys distributed online through the "Bridging the Unbridgeable" research project’s blog.* With extensive case studies to illustrate and support claims throughout, this comprehensive study is key reading for students and researchers of prescriptivism, the history of English and sociolinguistics. *Found at https://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/