In Past Participle

author Alexander Ihenetu advises us to pay as much attention to our English grammar and usage as we pay to our sciences and mathematics. After all, he reasons, in professional and educated society, the most respected and confident are quite often impeccable with their English.

He goes on to identify factors that negatively affect our English usage and they include: the multicultural and multiethnic nature of our society; the notion that grammar does not matter as long as people understand you; the polluting influence of street language; social media communication styles; rap song and slang terminology; lack of preparation in classic Latin (the root of many English words and phrases); too much watching of television at the expense of passionate reading of novels, magazines, and newspapers.

Moreover, passage through high school and college is not always a guarantee of literacy and good writing skills. The author expresses surprise at the pervasive lack of use of the past participle tenses of English verbs in today's society.

He therefore puts much emphasis on their accurate use through error examples, corresponding explanations, and relevant corrections and remarks. Using seven hundred examples, he exposes widely-used expressions and phrases that abuse the basic rules of English grammar and syntax, including errors of redundancy, double negatives, subject and verb disagreement, nonstandard, colloquial and informal usage, incomplete, awkward and illogical sentences, wrong applications and wrong concepts, wrong spellings, non-existent words, and so on.