Martha Kolln

Too much time showing how to diagram sentences to the detriment of more comprehensive description of the vagaries of grammar. This gives the immpression that every category of grammar is neat, but, in fact, there are fuzzy boundaries and syntactic as well as semantic ambiguity in all languages and the most experienced linguist can come up against sentences which are difficult to impossible to give a definitive analysis for.

All college students should be required to take a college-level grammar class. And this is the book they should use. So good. Plus, knowing English grammar inside and out really helps with learning other languages.

Transformational Grammar. It helped me sort through grammar a lot more easily than other books had been able to.

Never knew sentence diagrams are such fun. Invaluable. It is my back-to-the-basics book.