One Step Ahead: Punctuation [Paperback]

eminently clear and readable guide (Guardian )

Perfect for you if you have problems with punctuation, this new book is packed full of sound advice that will boost your self-confidence. In two sections-one giving step-by-step advice, and the other a quick reference section-it gives common strategies for making the right choices, and uses real examples from newspapers, magazines, and literature. Highly practical and designed for adults, it makes an often forbidding subject readable. Illustrated: cartoons, boxes, 'dos' and 'don'ts', easy to follow sections Practical: how punctuation can improve your writing, how to structure a sentence, compound and complex sentences, using semicolons or colons, speech and quotations, and more Problem solving: where to place commas, punctuation in addresses, numbers, and dates, complex sentences, full stops in abbreviations Point-by-point: guidance on each punctuation mark, including brackets, dashes, slashes, question marks, apostrophes, hyphens

Robert Allen is an experienced lexicographer and a writer on a wide range of language issues. A former Senior Editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, Chief Editor of The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990), an Associate Editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), and the Editor of Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (1999), he has written on the use of English in modern times. He now works as a freelance writer and editor, and he has written two titles that form
part of Oxford's new One Step Ahead series, One Step Ahead: Spelling and One Step Ahead: Punctuation.