Grammar Without Groans – A Return to Standards in English

The contents of this book are based on standards that reflect Ray Sparkes's experience of teaching secondary-school students for many years. He and other reviewers noted the common errors in written and spoken English, and Ray incorporated them into this informal book.

More than twenty years on, Ray's book is as appropriate as ever, and it has become even more relevant to the post-school needs of people who wish to brush up their English at college, for use in schools, in business or in every-day life. That is what Ray's son, Chris, has also found in teaching in further and higher education, and why he believes in the importance of the sub-title of this book: a return to standards in English.

This book is best used as a back-up to the many excellent, carefully graded course textbooks available in schools. It has always thrown an understandable, often amusing, spotlight on the misuse or spelling of English words - e.g. practice or practise, affect or effect, diinterested or uninterested - or punctuation when apostrophes appear in the wrong places, often unnecessarily, or where incorrectly placed commas can change the whole meaning of a sentence.