English Grammar Rules & Mistakes

 

Introduction

Writing is something many of us do on a daily basis. Yet few of us feel truly confident to say we are great writers. When you read something that is written well, it can be very powerful. Good writing can inspire people to get up and act, make them feel incredibly moved, or make them really mad. This is because the best writing transports you to a place where you see and feel what you are reading as if it were really happening to you. 
It is fair to say that we can all recognize the difference between good and bad writing and that we can acknowledge how important it is to write well. However, when office employees were asked whether they prioritized improving their writing skills over other professional skills, the answer was almost always no. 

We all learned how to read and write in school. For most of us, that is where our writing education ended. The main problem with this is that the quality of education on English grammar varies so much depending on when and where you went to school. Not to mention, for a long time, English language education adopted an intuitive approach that saw students gaining grammatical knowledge through reading rather than rote learning. This method of learning has a lot to be responsible for when it comes to a whole generation not being able to tell the difference between there and there. 

The result of not knowing your way around English grammar can often turn into a source of embarrassment for many of us. It might even have led to you being publicly outed by a coworker for your repeated misuse of you’re. What is worse, because we have been making the same grammatical mistakes for years, it is almost impossible to spot on your own that you are making them. I am certain that what led you to pick up this book was some incident or other that involved being shamed for making an obvious grammatical mistake. Don’t fear, we are all grammatical offenders here and what matters most is that you have recognized the need to do something about it!

In all truthfulness, nearly all of us make repeated grammatical mistakes and we all need to take the time to polish up our writing skills. The impact of taking a really small amount of time out of your day to improve your English grammar knowledge will be massive. In no time at all, you can use the super simple tips in this book to power up your writing and impress your boss with the strength of your well-written proposals or whatever it is you need to write. 

This book is supercharged with all the essential knowledge you need to know to improve your use of English grammar. How long will it take you to get through this book? It will take you a little more than a month to read and practice the tips and techniques presented in this book. You will quickly progress from zero to grammatical hero by simply following this book step by step.

As a way of a quick intro to me, I am Melody Jacobs, a 52-year-old avid book reader and expert grammar corrector. As a professional editor and proofreader, it is my job to fix people’s grammatical mistakes. So in truth, I don’t want the whole country to all of a sudden become grammatical experts, or I would be out of a job! What my experience has taught me is most errors that people make in their writing are about grammar and that they repeat these errors over and over, most likely as they don’t realize they are making them. It isn’t just in the texts I am proofing that I see errors, they also appear in the many published novels that I consume weekly. The reality is we are a nation of grammar offenders and mistakes are so common we are starting to think they are correct.

So, with this, I decided that rather than quietly complaining to my husband and friends about the raft of grammatical mistakes I see on a daily basis, I thought I would take my knowledge of the most common errors and set out to write this book. The main aim of the book is to provide an incredibly practical and quick way to improve your English grammar. You can take advantage of my extensive experience with understanding why people make mistakes. You can save yourself a lot of time and pain by spending this short time learning about grammar. After that, you can rest assured that what you learn in this book will massively impact your writing almost immediately. 

In the end, grammar is something that is right or wrong. There is no grey area. This is something which you can be happy about as once you have it down, you are good. However, I am fairly certain that you will have probably picked up this book because your grammar is holding you back and you have decided it is time to fix it. Poor grammar really does stand in your way of achieving the highest grades at school, being thought of as an outstanding employee, and ultimately being able to express yourself correctly whenever you speak or write.

That is why I give you my word that with this simple and quick-to-read guide on English grammar rules, you will be fully equipped to manage any grammatical situation. I promise you that you won’t feel like a floundering fish when you are put on the spot to produce a grammatically correct sentence structure. Instead, the grammar rules will be instilled within you so that you can respond with confidence and ease. On your end, a level of commitment is needed in order to practice what is outlined within this book. If you only read through this book once and do not practice the grammar rules, you will soon forget them and return to your bad habits. It is essential that you dedicate yourself to making a lasting change within this area. You only need to input a very small amount of effort to see a massive return. It is like riding a bike, once learned, it is not easily forgotten.

With this guide in hand and by using the personalized techniques described within, you will be on the road to English grammar perfection faster than you could ever have imagined. My previous students have all raved about how quickly they mastered the techniques and how stepping up their English grammar game has massively helped them in all areas of life. Now, I hope that with this book I can combine all of my knowledge on the most effective way to teach grammar and encourage a much larger amount of people to improve their grammar than I am able to with just my one-to-one lessons. 

So, come on! Jump in and start practising. Tomorrow you will already be better than today with your use of English grammar. Good things are waiting for you, just as soon as you can express yourself effectively and are able to show the world that you are an English grammar aficionado.