40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation

Posted: December 27, 2010

Jay White, founder of Dumb Little Man provides an extensive list of sources including the Purdue University online writing lab and numerous others.

After all these years you finally have the courage and opportunity to write the email announcing that you and you alone have single handedly saved the company from utter disaster. You're excited, you type it, you spell check it, and you hit send.

Everything is great except that your gold star memo has dangling modifiers, double negatives and run-on sentences colliding with each other.

Now I am no grammar whiz but I know a good resource when I see it. Purdue University maintains an online writing lab and I spent some time digging through it. Originally the goal was to grab some good tips that would help me out at work and on this site, but there is simply too much not to share.

Learn and enjoy!

Adjectives and adverbs

 

• A or An?: with exercise and answer key
  
• Adjective or Adverb?: with 2 exercises and answer keys
  
• Adjectives with Countable and Uncountable Nouns
  
• Using Articles ( A/An/The ): with 2 exercises and answer keys

 

Nouns

 

• A Little Help with Capitals
  
• Count and NonCount Nouns (with Plurals, Articles, and Quantity Words): with 2 exercises and answer keys
  
• Count and NonCount Nouns (with Articles and Adjectives): with exercise and answer key
  
• Writing Numbers: with exercise and answer key

 

Prepositions

 

• Prepositions of Direction: To, On(to), In(to): with exercise and answer key
  
• Prepositions of Location: At, In, On: with exercise and answer key
  
• Prepositions of Time, of Place, and to Introduce Objects
  
• Spatial Relationships of Prepositions

 

Pronouns

 

• Using Pronouns Clearly
  
• Pronoun Case

 

Sentence structure

 

• Appositives: with exercise and answer key
  
• Dangling Modifiers
  
• Independent and Dependent Clauses (definitions)
  
• Making Subject and Verbs Agree
  
• Parallel Structure
  
• Run-ons, Comma splices, and Fused Sentences
  
• Sentence Fragments: with 3 exercises and answer keys
  
• Sentence Punctuation Patterns
  
• Some Strategies for Improving Sentence Clarity

 

Verbs

 

• Active/Passive Verbs
  
• Irregular Verbs
  
• Sequence of Tenses
  
• Tense Consistency:w with an exercise and answer key
  
• Two-Part (Phrasal) Verbs- (Idioms)
  
• Verb Tenses
  
• Verbs with Helpers (Perfectives and Auxiliaries)
  
• Verbals: Gerunds, Participles, and Infinitives
  
• Voice and Mood

 

Apostrophes and Quotation Marks

 

• Apostrophes with exercise and answer key
  
• Quotation Marks: with exercise and answer key

 

Commas

 

• Commas after Introductions: with exercise and answer key
  
• Commas vs. Semicolons in Compound Sentences : with exercise and answer key
  
• Commas with Essential and Non-essential Elements: with3 exercises and answer keys
  
• Proofreading for Commas
  
• Using Commas: with 5 exercises and answer keys

 

Hyphens

 

• Using Hyphens

 

Other punctuation

 

• Brief Overview of Punctuation: Semicolons, Colons, Parentheses, Dash, Quotation Marks, and Italics: with exercise and answer key

 

Sentence Punctuation

 

• Sentence Punctuation Patterns
  
• Run-ons, Comma splices, and Fused Sentences

 

Spelling

 

• Spelling: Sound-Alike Words
  
• Spelling: Accept/Except and Affect/Effect : with 2 exercises and answer keys
  
• Spelling: i/e rules: with 2 exercises and answer keys
  
• Spelling: Noun Plurals
  
• Spelling: Suffixes–- ible vs. —able : with exercise and answer key

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Biz Tip Source: Dumb Little Man

About the Author: Jay White is the founder of Dumb Little Man. You can also follow Jay on Twitter.