So Dokuga, I'm planning a lil shopping trip to my local book store (Barns&Noble to be exact) and I'd like to pick up a grammar book to help with my writing and those full shelves can be intimidating when I don't have a list lol. So I would like to ask;

Which book(s) do you use? (if you use any at all that is)
And which book would you suggest?

I'd like to get the best one I can for my range($20), I'm dog sitting for my uncle and my payment is a gift card, he never said how much was on it. >.>

Try the little brown handbook...it's what you get in
freshman English in college most of the time.

GO HERE!

Oooh thank you very much, I'll go check it out.

I am currently completing by Bachelor's Degree in English and in every class The Little, Brown Handbook is requested. It is a wonderful book that touches up on punctuation, grammar and using things that writer's usually don't even know are there, such as this '...' <--- LOL.

So I will totally go with Jennifer's suggestion! It is a wonderful tool that helps me write and beta!

~Smo

Smortz wrote:
I am currently completing by Bachelor's Degree in English and in every class The Little, Brown Handbook is requested. It is a wonderful book that touches up on punctuation, grammar and using things that writer's usually don't even know are there, such as this '...' <--- LOL.

So I will totally go with Jennifer's suggestion! It is a wonderful tool that helps me write and beta!

~Smo


I am amazing at misusing the ellipsis, Smo. aha

I think that'll be the one I pick up then! If it hadn't been for this thread I probably would have ignored that book if I saw it on the book shelf. Thank you both for your help. <3

I agree that The Little Brown Handbook is the best, but another book you might consider is A Writer's Reference. I was forced to buy this one for the last English course I took in college. I didn't like it as well as The Little Brown Handbook, but it was still helpful and it's a good option if budget is an issue because it's cheaper.

Thank you very much! Funny enough, I was actually just talking to my friend about the Reference too.

It's not exactly a grammar book, but I like Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale. Its got the basic grammar stuff, but its also got a lot of other bits of information for crafting sentences and stories and the like. It really pokes around the possibilities of the English language. Best of all, Sin and Syntax is actually interesting; you can read it like any other book. If you're looking for basic grammar information I'd go for the other books people have mentioned, but if you have enough money left over, try Sin and Syntax out.

Thank you Shikibu, I'll have to check that one out too! :]

This one's an oldie, and I guess I'm showing how long I've been out of school, but I always found Strunk & White's The Elements of Style helpful. It's a thin little paperback and usually pretty cheap.

Two others I found useful AND entertaining were by Patricia T. O'Conner: Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing and Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English.