Word Study and English Grammar A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses [Formato Kindle]

This book was first published in 1918 and its intended readers were apprentices in the printing industry. So this book was meant for Englishspeaking youths, but this book is useful for people who speak English as a foreign language as well. The printed edition has 71 pages. This book is in the public domain, so it's available for free on several websites.

The contents are:

INTRODUCTION: IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT
THE WORD FAMILIES
NOUNS
ADJECTIVES
ARTICLES
VERBS
PRONOUNS
ADVERBS
PREPOSITIONS
CONJUNCTIONS
INTERJECTIONS
GENERAL NOTES
RULES FOR CORRECT WRITING
THE SENTENCE
THE PARAGRAPH
RULES FOR THE USE AND ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS
COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF WORDS
TABLES OF IRREGULAR VERBS
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
REVIEW QUESTIONS
GLOSSARY OF TERMS

To give you an idea of what the book is like I copy the first three phrases of the bit about nouns:

A noun is a word used as the name of anything that can be thought of,
_John_, _boy_, _paper_, _cold_, _fear_, _crowd_. There are three things
about a noun which indicate its relation to other words, its number, its
gender, and its case. There are two numbers, singular meaning one, and
plural meaning more than one. [...]

Another example from this book, this one from the section on 'Common errors in the use of words':

Gentleman Friend_ and _Lady Friend_ are expressions which should be
avoided, say "man or woman friend" or "man or woman of my acquaintance"
or even "gentleman or lady of my acquaintance."

This book could be useful for people learning or brushing up on their English grammar and vocabulary. The book is dated however, especially the bits on words, so for serious studying you would probably be better of buying a recently published book.

I love the free books for the Kindle. They greatly expand our homeschool reading beyond what we can find at our library as well as allow us to keep a copy as long as we need. It has been fun to compare the teaching of the topic over time.

Word Study & English Grammar

The author wrote, "Those forms of the verb which tell whether the time of the action is past, present, or future, are called tenses. There are six, viz.
Present, I print (am printing) the book. (I suppose the press operator might say this.)
Past, or imperfect, I printed the book. (The press operator might say this when he's finished for the day.)
Future, I shall print the book. (Seems correct but who would say it or write it?)
Perfect, or present perfect, I have printed the book. WRONG.
Pluperfect or past perfect, I had printed the book before you wrote. WRONG.
Future perfect, I will notify you when I shall have printed the book. WRONG.

The first three are correct, in their own peculiar way. The last three are incorrect. There is no way in English you can correctly say, 'I have printed the book'. The next one, the past perfect, is a better try than the present perfect, in that it provides context -- which is ALWAYS necessary -- but it is wrong. What makes this particularly interesting is that one very seldom sees the future perfect illustrated incorrectly, but here is an example.

My advice to prospective readers is to disregard what was written about the three perfect tenses. This is not intended as criticism of the book, but ONLY as a warning that the original author did not understand the perfect tenses. Since verbs are the most difficult of everything relating to speaking and writing correctly and since the three perfect tenses are half of the six, 'buyer beware' seems barely adequate.

I would be pleased to hear from anyone who has an interest in English grammar, preferably by using my email address which Amazon shows in the usual place. Click on my name and you'll see it.