Contents PART ONE: THE BASICS v 1 Discovering Grammar 3 Identifying nouns 3 Using capital letters 5 Replacing nouns with pronouns 7 Knowing the articles 10 Understanding verbs 10 Revising the points 17 Practising what you’ve learnt 17 2 Expanding your Knowledge 19 Making words ‘agree’ 19 Introducing clauses 21 Handling phrases 25 Using adjectives to colour your writing 25 Employing adverbs 27 Using prepositions 28 Revising the points 29 Practising what you’ve learnt 30 3 Polishing up your Punctuation 32 Knowing when to stop 32 Using commas correctly 33 Making use of the semi-colon, the colon and the dash 37 List of illustrations ix Preface xi