Preface

﹝Taiwan﹞ Xuanyuanyou

English grammar is a necessary foundation for writing in English.The issues involved in writing can be said to be complicated. Each link must be handled properly, through small words, through sentences, and through articles.In the English learning process of “listening, speaking, reading, and writing”, writing has always been the last and most difficult step.

The object of English grammar discussion is “sentences”; the purpose of learning grammar is to understand the structure and all changes of English sentences, understand the most complex sentences, and further write various English sentences from simple sentences to compound sentences to simplified clauses, clear, correct and diverse.

The goal of this grammar book is to “conquer English sentence writing.”This book will lead readers to gradually open up all aspects of English sentence writing.Some elements that may appear in simple English sentences, including noun phrases, verb phrases, modifiers (adjectives and adverbs, prepositional phrases), etc., will be processed one by one in this book.Especially when writing, we will explain in detail in detail.The usage of the qualifier is processed together when processing the element of the noun phrase.When processing verb phrases, some changes that rely on verbs to express are processed together, including tense, tone (including auxiliary verbs and hypotheses), and voice (active and passive), etc.

If you only use simple sentences when writing an article, this writing style will appear to be inadequate due to the lack of changes in sentence patterns and the ability to express yourself is insufficient.Using conjunction words to combine more than two simple sentences can form compound sentences or complex sentences.If the peer connection words such as and, or, but are used to connect two peer clauses, the sentence formed is called a composite sentence.What you need to pay the most attention to when writing a compound sentence is the requirement of symmetry, and if there are duplicate elements in the compound sentence, you should be careful to avoid errors.These requirements will be processed one by one in the relevant chapters and books.

Complex sentences are composed of main clauses and subordinate clauses, and are connected by subordinate connection words such as that, because, which, etc.According to the word category, subordinate clauses can be divided into noun clauses, adverb clauses, and adjective clauses (also known as relational clauses).If the basic sentence structure is established solidly when learning simple sentences, then it will not be too difficult to construct complex sentences in combination with simple sentences.The easy mistakes to make in complex sentences are in the sentence pattern, especially in relational clauses. There are many confusions between them and noun clauses and adverb clauses, and this book will clarify them one by one.

Finally, there are the most challenging reduced clauses.The so-called simplified clauses cover the so-called non-limited clauses, participle sentences, independent phrases, and isotopic terms in traditional grammar, as well as various terms such as non-limited verbs, gerunds, gerund phrases, indefinite phrases, present participle phrases, past participle phrases and other various terms.A simplified clause is to use complex sentences as raw materials to simplify (reduction), retaining a limited clause, but compressing all the repetitive and empty components in complex sentences, creating a condensed sentence that is both concise and clear.

Simplified clauses are both concise and clear, and are a high-level sentence pattern with excellent rhetoric effects, but simplified clauses are very prone to errors.For example, improper omission of subjects of subordinate clauses will produce an error of “dangling modifiers”.Even professional British and American writers can make such mistakes by accident, and publishing companies have to hire special personnel to proofread the manuscript and correct this mistake.We will also discuss the common simplified clause errors in relevant chapters.

If readers follow the plan of this book, first understand some basic elements in the sentence, and then establish a solid composite sentence structure through simple sentences, then it will be a natural task to use some original concepts in this book to construct simplified clauses.In this process, we will specifically emphasize the areas where writing errors are prone to occur in each link to remind readers to pay attention.