Chapter 1: Elementary Rules of Usage

This chapter sets forth eleven rules of English usage dealing with the formation of possessives; correct use of commas, colons, and dashes; nounverb agreement; pronoun cases; and participial phrases. Each rule is followed by a series of correct and incorrect examples with explanations. The chapter is not comprehensive (for example, it does not address all uses of commas); instead it addresses areas in which the authors felt errors were common at the time.

Chapter 2: Elementary Principles of Composition

Another set of eleven rules addresses structure in written work, moving from the overall structure of a piece ("Choose a suitable design and hold to it") to sentence structure ("Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end"). Again, each rule is followed by examples and amplification. The authors use excerpts from accomplished writers including Jean Stafford and E. M. Forster as models of...