Index 299 and repeated sounds, 176 and subordination, 174 Clauses definition of, 16 and multiple sentences, 125 and phrases, 47 and sentences, 16 and subject-verb agreement, 142 Cleft sentences, 131, 169 Closed word classes, 86 Collective nouns, 144 Colons, 186, 189 Commas See also Comma splices and adverbials, 197 and because clauses, 198 and coordinators, 188 and direct speech, 189 and interjections, 198 internal, 188 and marginal coordinators, 188 and nonrestrictive apposition, 195 and nonrestrictive clauses, 194 and predicates, 183 and quotation marks, 189 and reporting clauses, 189 rules about, 183 and short sentences, 187 and subjects, 183 to avoid misunderstanding, 199 and verbs, 199 and vocatives, 198 Comma splices, 186 Common case, 91 Common nouns, 88 Comparative clauses, 128, 150 Comparisons See also Comparative clauses absolute, 97 and adjectives, 96, 157 and adverbs, 98, 157 and case, 150 degrees of, 97 and formal writing, 158 and inflections, 97 and intensifiers, 157 and parallel clauses, 187 and parallelism, 176 and premodifiers, 97 and punctuation, 187 and superlatives, 97 Complement clauses, 127, 128 Complements attribute role of, 36 and front-focus, 169 and prepositional phrases, 70
as sentence elements, 33 and subordinate clauses, 126 Complex sentences, 125, 129, 174 Composition and grammatical study, 6 Compounds, 228 Compound sentences, 125, 129 Concrete nouns, 89 Conditional clauses, 155 Conjunctions as a closed word class, 86 coordinators, 111 subordinators, 111 Consistency, 178 Consonants. See Spelling Contractions, 154, 211 Conversation, 208 Conversion, 228 Coordinated clauses, 25 Coordinated expressions, 184 Coordinated main clauses, 188 Coordinated phrases, 149 Coordinated pronouns, 149, 151 Coordinating conjunctions. See Coordinators Coordination, 51, 129. See also Coordinators Coordinators, 111, 125, 188 Correlative expressions, 111 Count nouns, 89, 158 Dangling modifiers, 158 Dashes, 186 Declarative questions, 122, 124, 216 Declarative sentences definition, 16 and direct objects, 26 and direct speech, 189 and indicative mood, 62 and reporting clauses, 189 as statements, 17 and subjects, 24, 25 as a type of sentence, 121 uses of, 16 Definite article, 107 Definite noun phrases, 108 Demonstrative pronouns, 102, 109 Dependent genitives, 91, 101 Descriptive rules, 5 Determiners classes of, 48, 106 as a closed word class, 86 and coordination, 51 and count/non-count nouns, 89 and genitives, 91 and noun phrases, 48, 51, 106 order of, 106 and plurals, 89 possessive, 101