Preface 8
Glossary of Concepts 9
Vocabulary 19
Lexical Choice Involving Parts of Speech 19
Nominalisations 19
Adverbs vs.Verbs 22
Proper Adjectives 24
Adjectives vs.Prepositional Modifiers 25
Frequent Problems with Specific Lexical Items 27
Belong 27
Get 28
Emerge,Happen,Occur Prove,Turn Out 30
Namely and Related Expressions 32
Easy,Difficult,Possible,Impossible 34
Value 36
Citizen 37
AppositionsⅠ 39
Selected Structural Peculiarities 39
AppositionsⅡ:Appositions vs.Prepositional Structures 43
Because in Negative Sentences 47
Being and Having 50
Be+to-infinitive 54
Comment Clauses with As 55
Complements and the Verb To Be 57
Constructions with As and Than 61
Gerunds 64
Most 66
Of:Many of…,Most of…,Some of…etc 67
Problems with Negative Sentences 69
Relative Clauses and the Comma 73
The Comma-see Relative Clauses and the Comma 73
There 77
What,Which etc 83
Stylistic Devices 89
Cleft Sentences with the Pronoun It 89
Emphatic Word Order:‘Fronting’ 92
Ⅰ:Hardly,Only,Rarely,Scarcely etc 92
Ⅱ:With As and Though 95
Relative Clauses in Apposition 98
Clarity and Syntax 103
Abrupt Sentence Endings 103
Coordination 106
Ⅰ:Unjustified Change of Subject 106
Ⅱ:Concord and Gender Bias 108
Ⅲ:Absence of Parallel Structure 112
Ⅲ:Unjustified Change of Person 117
Ⅴ:‘Dangling Participles’ 118
Splices 119
Unclear Antecedents Ⅰ 121
Unclear Antecedents Ⅱ-The Pronoun It 123
Un-English Syntax 126
Ⅰ:Verb and Object 126
Ⅱ:Main and Subordinate Clauses 127
Ⅲ:Composite Attributive Expressions 129
Ⅳ:Parallel Expressions 132
Ⅴ:Active vs.Passive 134
Rhetorical Enhancers:Conjunctions and Discourse Markers 136
Concession and Contrast 136
Similarity and Contrast 141
Therefore and Related Expressions 145
“In My Opinion…” 148
Articles:A Few Tips 152
Punctuation 161
The Colon 161
The Dash 165
Inverted Commas 168
The Semicolon 172
Key to the Exercises 177
Index 203