Complete Review of Grammar

You can edit by ear, or by judging what sounds or looks right. But can you explain your editorial decisions? This class will give you the vocabulary and the solid understanding of grammar rules to explain your edits. A great confidence builder for professional editors, and a great introduction for those new to editing or proofreading.

During this live, interactive, instructor-led class you will learn the basic vocabulary and rules of English grammar, with a focus on problem areas in the language.

Parts of Speech and Parts of a Sentence

• The 8 Parts of Speech
  
• The 5 Basic Sentence Patterns
  
• Recognizing Sentence Fragments and Run-On Sentences
  

Clauses and Phrases

• The 4 Types of Clauses
  
• The 5 Types of Phrases
  

Punctuation

• Commas with Introductory Elements
  
• Commas with Interrupting Elements
  
• Colons
  
• Semicolons
  
• Other punctuation marks upon request:
  Hyphens, Apostrophes, Quotation Marks, Parentheses, Ellipsis, Dashes, and Brackets
  

Tense, Mood, and Voice

• The 12 Verb Tenses
  
• The 3 Moods of the Verb
  
• Active versus Passive Voice
  

Subject-Verb Agreement

• The “And” Rule
  
• The “Or” Rule
  
• The Trouble with Indefinite Pronouns
  
• Handling Proper Nouns, Collective Nouns, and False Subjects
  
• Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
  
• More Trouble with Indefinite Pronouns
  
• Five ways around the “his or her” problem
  

Pronoun Case

• I versus Me, He versus Him, and Who versus Whom
  
• Understanding Possessives
  

Parallelism

• Parallel Structures in Lists
  
• Parallel Structures in Text
  

Modifiers

• Misplaced
  
• Dangling
  
• Ambiguous

Schedule

2 days, 12 instructional hours. Too much? A shorter version of this class can be arranged.