Writers' Workshop Grammar Handbook

The Center for Writing Studies, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Thank you for using the Grammar Handbook at the Writers' Workshop, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This Handbook explains and illustrates the basic grammatical rules concerning parts of speech, phrases, clauses, sentences and sentence elements, and common problems of usage.

While we have done our best to be comprehensive and accurate, we do not claim to be the final authority on grammatical issues. We appreciate constructive emails with questions, suggestions, or corrections, but please understand we may be unable to respond to all of them.

Parts of Speech
Phrases
Clauses
Sentences and Sentence Elements
Common Usage Problems

:: Parts of Speech

Nouns
: Nouns
: Common and Proper Nouns
: Mass and Count Nouns
: Pronouns
: Pronoun/Antecedent Agreement
: Noun and Pronoun Case

Verbs
: Principal Tenses of Verbs
: Auxiliary Verbs
: Perfect and Progressive Verb Forms
: Regular and Irregular Verbs
: Verb Mood

Adjectives and Adverbs
: Adjectives
: Adverbs
: Comparatives and Superlatives

Conjunctions
: Conjunctions
: Conjunctive Adverbs

Other Parts of Speech
: Prepositions
: Interjections
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:: Phrases

: Noun and Verb Phrases
: Prepositional Phrases
: Verbals and Verbal Phrases
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:: Clauses

: Independent and Dependent Clauses
: Adjective, Adverb, and Noun Clauses
: Relative Clauses
: Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses
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:: Sentences and Sentence Elements

: Sentence Types
: Subjects and Predicates
: Active and Passive Voice
: Complements
: Direct and Indirect Objects
: Appositives
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:: Common Usage Problems

: Homophones
: Parallelism
: Misplaced Modifiers
: Dangling Modifiers
: Sentence Fragments
: Fused Sentences, Run-ons, and Comma Splices
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