|  | Author: Jane Straus
Creator: Mignon Fogarty
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.63
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New (33) Used (31) from $8.48
Seller: indoobestsellers
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 3476
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 10
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 0470222689
Dewey Decimal Number: 428.2
EAN: 9780470222683
ASIN: 0470222689
Publication Date: December 14, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 31-33 of 33
 Thirty years of careful research to perfect the material January 16, 2008
Jane Straus
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
I am proud that my book, used and endorsed by thousands of teachers and trainers nationwide, is a perennial bestseller on Amazon. I hope that you enjoy this expanded 10th edition with updated, easy-to-understand rules, an abundance of examples, and fun quizzes to test your skills. I encourage you to use the Search Inside feature to see just how helpful and enjoyable this reference guide and workbook will be for you.
 Full of errors and omissions January 7, 2008
Concerned
233 out of 266 found this review helpful
I have been an English professor for fifteen years, and my advice is that people interested in improving their grammar find a better book than this one. It is full of errors. I care very much about getting students to write and speak properly (for many it's a key to success), and that's why I am so disappointed in this book. (By the way, I have not written any book that competes with this one for your dollars.) Better material is available free of charge on the internet.
I will list some errors below, all found in the very first section of the book, and you will note that in all the canned testimonials that appear on this site, not one of my statements will be refuted. Instead, you will hear about how this book "answered all of my questions" or "helped me land my dream job" or "turned my company around," etc. Nonsense.
ERROR 1: On page 2 we are told, "A subject will come before a phrase beginning with 'of'." This is simply not a rule; subjects often follow "of". Consider this sentence: "Hoping to win the respect of her employer, Sandra learned to speak fluent English." The subject, Sandra, comes after a phrase beginning with "of" ("of her employer"), not before one. Someone who followed the rule in the book might falsely conclude that "respect" is the subject, as it comes before "of".
ERROR 2: There are grammar and punctuation errors in the writing itself. On page 1 we read, "Being able to identify the subject and verb correctly will also help you with commas and semicolons as you will see later." It is certainly odd that a sentence about proper punctuation should itself include a punctuation error; a mandatory comma has been omitted between "semicolons" and "as."
ERROR 3: On page 2 we are told, most unhelpfully, "To find the subject and verb, always find the verb first." (This is like a recipe that says, "To bake a cake and make frosting for it, first bake the cake," and leaves its instructions on cake-baking at that.) Once you find the verb, the book continues, "Then ask who or what performed the verb." This sloppy wording is almost bound to cause confusion. Consider this sentence: "In spite of the bad instructions, the error was found by the student." The verb is "was found," and the student did the finding. It would be natural to suppose, then, that the student "performed the verb" and thus is the subject. The subject, however, is "the error," not "the student".
All of these problems (and others I have not mentioned) are found on the first two pages of the book.
Please note that no one promoting this book will defend the idea that subjects must precede phrases beginning with "of," or that finding "who performed the verb" gives students enough to go on to determine the subject, or that the author makes no punctuation errors of her own in the book. They as good as admit that some of the rules in the book are wrong, that the explanations are inadequate, and that the author makes punctuation errors. So one wonders what might motivate these people to endorse the book. As for my motive, it is this: concern for students who will be (and have been) misled by this faulty product.
The previous edition used crucial terms that it did not bother to define--like "direct object," "object of the preposition," and even "preposition" itself.
Imagine a grammar book that leaves students in the dark about the meaning of the word "preposition," and you have some idea of what this book is like.
As for crucial grammatical elements like transitive verbs, the subjunctive, linking verbs, helping verbs--they were not even mentioned. Will anyone step forward and say, "In this edition, 'preposition' is defined and transitive verbs are discussed"? Of course not.
This book omits even very basic material, and, what is worse, much of what it does say is misleadingly phrased or just plain wrong. You can do better.
Excellent Grammar Book!!!! December 26, 2007
A. Jorge (DR, Santo Domingo)
42 out of 49 found this review helpful
I found this book searching a grammar rule in Google and entered to the author's site (a very good site). This book is really useful, has many grammar rules and punctuations. At the end of the book, it has a series of quizzes of each chapter and its answers. I really appreciate to have found this book!!!!!!!!
Showing reviews 31-33 of 33
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