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The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes | 
| Author: Jane Straus
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.17
You Save: $4.78 (32%)
Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 2461
Media: Paperback
Edition: 10
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0470222689
Dewey Decimal Number: 428.2
EAN: 9780470222683
Publication Date: December 14, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is filled with easy-to-understand rules,real-world examples, dozens of reproducible exercises, and pre- and post-tests. This handy workbook is ideal for teachers, students in middle school through college, ESL students, homeschoolers, and professionals. Valuable for anyone who takes tests or writes reports, letters, Web pages, e-mails, or blogs, The Blue Book offers instant answers to everyday English usage questions.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Full of errors and omissions January 7, 2008
82 out of 88 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
39 out of 41 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!!!!!!!!
Thumbs up from the parents AND the kids! February 2, 2008
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
A couple of weeks ago I was reading a book of short stories while waiting for car repairs. The book was written by a successful, respected author and the stories were quite enjoyable. However, there were so many grammatical errors that it eventually became distracting. Yes, I took out my pencil and started correcting the errors. (my favorite was the mention of someone who had elaborately QUAFFED hair!) How was it, I wondered, that neither the famous writer nor her editor had a grammar book handy when they were getting the book ready for publication?
THIS is the book they could have used. No, it is not a textbook, and it won't teach you everything there is to know about the English language. But it's good for a quick reference, the list of homophones is extensive and very useful, and it will make you a better writer. The book covers topics from the very basic ("a" vs. "an") to more advanced writing skills (hyphens, en dashes and em dashes,)to very subtle differences which are common sources of errors ("that" vs. "which"). If you read it all the way through, you won't remember everything, but you WILL learn things. I consider myself a good writer, but I learned quite a few things from this book.
I have two children, one in middle school and one in high school, and both enjoyed taking the quizzes in the back of the book. Call us a whole family of grammar nerds, but we thought it was fun!
Yes, there are some mistakes in this book, and I would suggest a more thorough editing for the eleventh edition. I'm not terribly busy, by the way, if they're looking for volunteers.
Lesson Planning Nightmare! February 23, 2008
11 out of 15 found this review helpful
I was going to use this book to plan lessons for my ESL class, but it's bad to almost a weird extent. For example, everyone else in the world talks about "subordinate clauses" and "independent clauses." This strange book uses the terms "weak clauses" and "strong clauses" instead. If your students are going to have to take standardized tests, stay away from this book! No test will ask them what a "weak clause" is--there is no such thing! Why not use the terms students will be asked about, or the terms used in other books they will study?
Then there are things that are even odder: made up rules that are not true. The book says, for example, "do not use a comma when the sentence starts with a strong clause followed by a weak clause." So, according to the book, the following is correct: "I was persuaded by my friends to buy the book although my teacher said it was bad." But that's absolutely wrong. There has to be a comma between "book" and "although". ("Although" begins a subordinate clause--or "weak clause" in the private lingo of this book.) I couldn't believe my eyes! Then I see that the author of the book actually obeys this non-rule and leaves commas out all over the place in the lessons.
So I went to the author's website (where all the rules in the book are available for free, anyway, so why buy it?) and found the following comments in the author's "Grammar Blog" for 2/12/08: "Thanks to Shawna L. for pointing out that the third example in my last newsletter had an error," and "Thanks to Kathy D. for pointing my sloppy grammar." What kind of grammar teacher needs students to point out his or her own grammatical errors? At least my visit to the site cleared up the mystery of this book. The author just doesn't know too much about grammar.
Not in Line with Homeschooling Values January 16, 2008
9 out of 21 found this review helpful
On YouTube, the author of the book has this to say when talking about what we should strive for: "It's that moment of awareness, it's the choice of a thought, it's the letting go of one self-judgment, it's the commitment to believing we're worthy at any moment, it's doing one good thing for ourselves, it's forgiving ourselves in that moment, it's bringing ourselves compassion. It's any of those things, and in that one moment, we are in the extraordinary....The extraordinary is what is natural. The extraordinary is the flow." This kind of Californian thing is not what homeschooling is about. (You can find it on YouTube by searching for "life keys part 10").
Also, there are mistakes in this book and not everything it says is true, even about grammar.
Save yourself exposing your children to wrong information. Isn't there a grammar book out there that teaches good values as it teaches grammar?
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