Grammar and Punctuation Essentials

Overview

What are the principles that underlie clear and effective written English? It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if your writing skills are not up to the task. This half-day interactive course shows you to apply the basic rules of grammar and punctuation to improve your writing. It also teaches you how to avoid the most common errors. There are plenty of examples of grammar and punctuation in action, and exercises for you to complete in class. The notes for the course include summary sheets that you can use at work and simple approaches to checking your written work.

Course Content

• The eight basic parts of speech, and what they do.
• Verbs, finite and infinite, and how to use them correctly.
• Sentence structure, meaning and clarity.
• Active voice, passive voice, and which to use.
• Common problems with English grammar.
• Why the adverb is not your friend, and the pitfalls of writing 'descriptive' English.
• Punctuation: the correct use of the colon, semi-colon, and comma.
• The mystery of the apostrophe, and why it’s a problem.

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course attendees should be able to:

• Identify and correct common errors of grammar and punctuation.
• Apply the ground rules of sentence structure and syntax.
• Write with clarity and precision.
• Edit documents for grammatical correctness.

Benefits to your organisation

• Reduce time in rewriting or having written work edited by managers.
• Comply with agency standard for writing.
• Professional completion of documentation.

Benefits to you

• To understand the requirements of good grammar and punctuation in agency correspondence by applying essential rules for grammatical correctness.
• Be able to write with clarity and meaning
• Have confidence in being able author documents using the coorct rules of grammar.