Right-click here to download pictures. Jane Straus

Welcome to your GrammarBook.com e-newsletter.

What a fountain of information you offer on GrammarBook.com. You're a lighthouse in a sea of grammatical doubts and traps.
—Huibert L.



I am learning something new every week thanks to your weekly
e-newsletter!
—Richard P.



The examples set out in The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation provide excellent resources that are easy for my students to follow.
—Peter C.

Test Your Vocabulary

“The richer and more copious one’s vocabulary and the greater one’s awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one’s thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.”
―Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

Here is another of our intermittent vocabulary tests. The answers directly follow the quiz.


1. arcane

A) evil
B) sweet
C) mysterious
D) curved

2. temerity

A) boldness
B) fear
C) inflexibility
D) foresight

3. feckless

A) uninformed
B) sterile
C) incompetent
D) distasteful

4. precipitous

A) unexpected
B) edgy
C) clean
D) steep

5. stolid

A) muscular
B) impassive
C) watchful
D) confused

6. egregious

A) outrageous
B) angry
C) desperate
D) life-changing

7. trenchant

A) watery
B) sharp
C) melodic
D) handy

8. assuage

A) demolish
B) predict
C) relieve
D) condemn

9. protean

A) healthy
B) versatile
C) unruly
D) implausible

10. oxymoron

A) a complete fool
B) a muscular bully
C) a legal document that voids a contract
D) a phrase that seems to contradict itself



ANSWERS

1: C) mysterious. Their arcane habits and practices shocked our Western eyes.

2: A) boldness. He had the temerity to disobey the judge’s orders.

3: C) incompetent. Rita’s feckless cousin just lost another job.

4: D) steep. The young hikers turned back, unwilling to scale the precipitous cliffs.

5: B) impassive. I wished that my class of stolid undergraduates were more interested in what was happening around them.

6: A) outrageous. This was an egregious act of betrayal.

7: B) sharp. Oscar’s trenchant wit won him many an argument.

8: C) relieve. To assuage her guilt, she decided to change her ways.

9: B) versatile. He is a protean musician who can play in almost any style.

10: D) a phrase that seems to contradict itself. Isn’t “jumbo shrimp” an oxymoron?

Because of the e-newsletter’s large readership, please submit your English usage questions through GrammarBook.com’s Grammar Blog.


Free BONUS Quiz for You!

[[firstname]], because you are a subscriber to the newsletter, you get access to one of the Subscription Members-Only Quizzes. Click here to take an Its vs. It’s Quiz and get your scores and explanations instantly!

 
 

Follow @GrammarBook on Twitter

GrammarBook.com is on Twitter! Follow @GrammarBook for weekly grammar tips, news, and information!

 
 

More Good News for Quiz Subscribers

We are pleased to announce that we have added even more quizzes to help you challenge yourself, your students, and your staff. We added quizzes to existing categories and created some new categories such as “Confusing Verbs,” “Subjunctive Mood,” “Comprise,” “Sit vs. Set vs. Sat,” and “Spelling.”

We reviewed and strengthened every quiz on our website to ensure consistency with the rules and guidelines contained in our eleventh edition of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.

If you think you have found an error in a quiz, please email us at help@grammarbook.com.



Hundreds of Additional Quizzes at Your Fingertips

Hundreds of Quizzes

“So convenient … hundreds of quizzes in one click.”


[[firstname]], Subscribe to receive hundreds of English usage quizzes not found anywhere else!

  • Take the quizzes online or download and copy them.
  • Get scored instantly.
  • Find explanations for every quiz answer.
  • Reproduce the quizzes to your heart’s content.
  • EASY to use.
  • No software to download.
  • No setup time.
  • A real person to help you if you have any questions!

Instructors and Employers: we make your life easier!

  • Assign quizzes to your students or employees.
  • Students log in from anywhere.
  • Scores are tallied and compiled for you.
  • You decide whether to let students see their own scores and quiz explanations.
  • Let GrammarBook.com take the hassle out of teaching English!

“Fun to test my skills!”

“The explanations really help … thanks!”

Your choice: Subscribe at the $29.95 or $99.95 level ($30 off - previously $129.95).

“I download the quizzes for my students who don’t have computer access.”

Subscribe today to receive hundreds of English usage quizzes not found anywhere else!

“Makes learning English FUN!”


Quizzes

Don’t need all the quizzes at once?
You can now purchase the same quizzes individually for ONLY 99¢ each. Purchase yours here.


The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

Get Yours Today!

Get Amazon’s No. 1 Best-seller in Four Categories!
No. 1 in Grammar
No. 1 in Reading
No. 1 in Lesson Planning
No. 1 in Vocabulary

The Blue Book of Grammar
and Punctuation

by Jane Straus, Lester Kaufman, and Tom Stern

The Authority on English Grammar!
Eleventh Edition Now Available

Have You Ordered Your Copy Yet?

An indispensable tool for busy professionals, teachers, students, homeschool families, editors, writers, and proofreaders.

Available in print AND as an e-Book! Over 2,000 copies are purchased every month!

Order Your Copy Today!

  • Hundreds of Grammar, Punctuation, Capitalization, and Usage Rules 
  • Real-World Examples
  • Spelling / Vocabulary / Confusing Words
  • Quizzes with Answers

The publisher is extending its discount offer until December 31, 2015! If you live in the United States or Canada, order the new edition of The Blue Book through Wiley.com and get 30 percent off and FREE shipping. Simply go to bit.ly/1996hkA and use discount code E9X4AYY.

For those of you who live outside the U.S. and Canada, although the publisher is not able to offer free shipping, you will get 35 percent off to help offset your shipping costs. Simply go to bit.ly/1996hkA and use discount code E9X4A.


Wordplay

Rules for Writing Good: Writing Tips
Beginning this week, we are going to run selections from a perverse set of rules that are guilty of the very mistakes they seek to prevent. English teachers, students, scientists, and writers have been circulating these self-contradictory rules for more than a century.

1. Don’t be a person whom people realize confuses who and whom.

2. Never use no double negatives.

3. When writing, participles must not be dangled.


68 One-Minute English Usage Videos

English In A Snap: 68 One-Minute English Usage Videos FREE 

Learn all about who and whom, affect and effect, subjects and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, commas, semicolons, quotation marks, and much more by just sitting back and enjoying these easy-to-follow lessons. Tell your colleagues (and boss), children, teachers, and friends. Click here to watch.


Forward this e-newsletter to your friends and colleagues.

Newsletter

If you received this FREE weekly e-newsletter from a friend, click here to have it sent to you each week.

Look for more Hot Tips from GrammarBook.com next week.

Miss a recent newsletter? Click here to view past editions.

Subscriber Log In Subscriber Benefits