English Grammar: Your Questions Answered Paperback – 2 Feb. 2017

This engaging and original grammar guide is written in a concise, entertaining and accessible manner. It will be of real value to anyone with a genuine interest in communicating effectively and clearly, It will also be of interest to anyone who has occasional doubts about the most appropriate way to express something.. Professor McCarthy's style is very appealing and shows that a deep academic knowledge of a subject is far from incompatible with an ability to entertain and inform the lay reader. The spirit of the book reflects, I feel, the view of the linguist John Sinclair, who remarked that we should see grammar as a device which enables us to say what we want to say, rather than as an arbitrary set of obstacles to be overcome. A book such as this which promotes effective use of grammar without pedantry is most welcome.Dr Ivor Timmis, Reader in English Language Teaching, Leeds Beckett University, UK

“ENGLISH GRAMMAR: Your Questions Answered” is the distillation of many years of Prof. Mike McCarthy’s research on corpora and how people find different ways to use language to communicate most successfully. The examples in the book are not only relevant and useful but also presented in a really enjoyable way. Non-native speakers of English will find this book of great help with grammar, vocabulary and usage but even more importantly, it will aid them in becoming autonomous learners and finding ways to develop new approaches to learning and teaching. If you really want to understand the quirks of the English Language, this is a book you are sure to enjoy.Antonia SánchezUniversitat de València. Spain

Who would have thought that it was possible to read a text on grammar from cover to cover? It's organised so as to appeal to the non-specialist, it's very entertaining (even amusing) and it's well produced. I also discovered what an interrobang was.

Wonderful book – easy to read, not stuffy in any way, but you can be confident in its authority. Every home should have one.

The author focuses on modern English , how people use it and makes you conscious of the different levels of the English language and tells you which one fits the situation.

Good

Perfect for students.

The book is a delight: I found myself reading it from left to right, though it is organized as an A-Z reference which is how most people will use it when needing a well-informed opinion to resolve a usage issue like: shall or will; apostrophes; split infinitives; data v datum, and so on and on.The author draws on a professional lifetime spent studying how we use the English language. He has written highly-regarded heavyweight grammars as well as bestselling textbooks for students of the language but as far as I know this is his first excursion into writing something primarily aimed at native users of English and the usage problems we all encounter. The result is a triumph of clarity and wit and common sense.When reading the book I felt the author as a benign presence concerned that his readers can accurately achieve what they want to when using the language and can avoid the kind of slip which produces a judgemental reaction from people of a certain cast of mind. This makes the book empowering – it inspires confidence in the user. There can be no higher praise for a usage guide.

よくある文法書ではなく、構成的には文法用語（e.g. agreement）、修辞学用語（e.g. malapropism）語彙項目（e. g .affect/effect）などがアルファベット順に配列された116頁の文法・語法辞典である。たとえば、get 見出し項目の「get の受身形」を見ると、be arrested よりget arrested の方が口語的で書き言葉よりも話し言葉に多く用いられるという。ここまでは大抵の文法書、英和辞書に書かれているが、コーパスで調べてみると、「get の受身形」は好ましくないことに用いられる傾向にあるという（たとえば、get beaten up, locked out , thrown out etc.）。しかしこれは文法上の問題ではなく世相を反映したものだろうとユーモラスに解説している。こんな解説は初めてだったので、興味深かった。もう一つ例を挙げる。goには　He looks at me and goes, “I know you from somewhere.” (彼は私を見て「どこかでお目にかかりましたね」と言ったんだ) のようなgo=say の用法がある。これも大抵の英和辞書に出ているが、本書では「しばしば歴史的現在(historical present)で使われる」という一歩進んだ指摘がある。本書の著者はEnglish Phrasal Verbs in Use, English Collocations I Useなどで世に知れた学者で、学習文法の第一人者である。安心して読める有益な文法・語法書である。

This is a wonderfully approachable and absorbing book that not only does exactly as the title suggests, but also provides a ring side seat into the ever evolving grammar of the English language. It is not a book of rules and linguistic jargon as you might expect a grammar book to be, but is packed with amusing anecdotes and observations made from a life researching the English language and based on the evidence of huge databases of American and British English corpora.It is the kind of book that you can dip into or meander pleasantly along through. A great addition to the tablet or bookshelf of anyone passionate about the English language.

This is a wonderful read, incredibly accessible, especially for a grammar book, and perfectly appropriate for British English, American English, and virtually any other variety of English. The reader feels as if we're old friends having a nice relaxing meal together, talking about a subject we all love (language). The author's humor and humility really shine through, while the respect he shows for dialect speakers is admirable. I learned quite a few things and was reminded of issues I hadn't thought about in a while. Above all, the book reflects the way people REALLY use language, which, I believe, is the essence of McCarthy's approach to scholarship.

Even for native speakers (and professional writers like me), this book does much to save us from the embarrassment of common and often ridiculous mistakes most of us commit in spoken and written language. Professor McCarthy makes it an entertaining and fun read.