Basics of English Usage

Wynford Hicks is a freelance journalist and editorial trainer.  He has worked as a reporter, subeditor, feature writer, editor and editorial consultant on magazines, newspapers and books.  He is the author of Quite Literally and English for Journalists, now in its third edition.

• 1 Introduction -- 2 Spelling -- Words people get wrong -- Confusions -- I before e -- Plurals -- Suffixes -- American spelling -- Program/programme -- Spelling of French words -- 2 Grammar and style -- 3 Problem words -- 4 Punctuation -- Accents, accent marks, diacritics -- Apostrophe -- Asterisk, star -- Bold -- Brackets, round, square, angle, brace -- Bullet point, blob -- Capitals, caps, upper case -- Caret -- Colon -- Comma -- Dagger, obelisk -- Dash -- Ditto marks -- Dots, ellipsis, leader dots -- Exclamation mark, screamer, shriek -- Full stop, full point, period -- Hash -- Hyphen -- Italics -- Numbers, fractions, dates -- Paragraph break -- Question mark, query -- Quote marks, quotes, inverted commas -- Semicolon -- Slash, bar, diagonal, oblique, shilling mark, solidus, stroke, virgule -- Underlining -- Further reading.