Essential Grammar

Delegate feedback

"Essential Grammar was a fantastic complement to my proofreading training. The course was well organised, it was easy to locate information and I liked structure. I referred to Essential Grammar throughout my proofreading training, when I needed more information about a particular grammatical issue." Taliha Quadri, Freelance Proofreader; Managing Director, The Selkie

What's included?

Personal tutor

Each student is assigned a personal tutor, an experienced editor, who provides support throughout the course.

Course materials and access to online learning platform

You’ll have full access to the PTC's online learning platform for 12 months, when all course materials can be accessed. This includes an automated system to keep track of your progress throughout the course and a wide range of self-check exercises to help put your new knowledge into practice.

Course outline

• Introduction
  • What is grammar about?
  • What's the relationship between grammar and punctuation?
• What's in a name?
  • The seven main word classes
  • Strings of words - phrases and word order
  • Other core grammatical terms
• Verbs
  • The six different aspects of verbs
  • Tenses and agreement
  • Verb forms
  • Be, have and do
  • Verb voices
  • Mood
• Constructing sentences
  • Key elements in sentences
  • Verb and predicative
  • Combining the elements
  • Key relationships
  • Clauses and sentences
  • Subordinate clauses as key elements
  • That or which?
  • Phrases of apposition
• The issue section
  • Personal pronoun problems
  • Issues with structure
  • The gerund
  • Matters of judgement
  • Mostly to do with change
• The basic principles of punctuation
  • Capital letters
  • The apostrophe
  • Hyphens
  • Commas, semicolons, colons and dashes
  • Punctuating quotations
• Conclusion and booklist

How to enrol and pay

Payment options

The course costs £70, or £35 if purchased in conjunction with Essential Proofreading, Essential Copy-Editing or Creative Copywriting for Publishers.

To enrol, you need to click on the ‘Add to Cart’ button on this page. You will be asked to register (if you have not already done so) and, at that point, will be able to pay immediately by credit/debit card. Confirmation of your enrolment will then be emailed to you, and you will be able to gain access to the course by logging in to the website. Full details will be contained in the email.

Course completion

You must complete the course within 12 months of enrolment or, if you wish to continue the course beyond this period, you can study for a further 12 months following payment of a £75 re-registration fee. Any further extensions are at the discretion of The Publishing Training Centre.

About the author

Originally a secondary teacher of English (in an era vilified for its casual approach to grammar, spelling and punctuation – ironic, given the number of courses he now runs in these areas!), Andrew Steeds became a copy-editor at educational publisher Thomas Nelson in the 1980s, following a short spell in educational research. He worked on the English and modern languages lists, becoming a commissioning editor for English and drama before leaving to take up similar positions at Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton.

The publishing world fell into one of its periods of turbulence in the early 1990s. With a freelance career looking marginally more secure, Andrew left Hodder to set himself up independently in 1991. He hasn't looked back.

Andrew’s main area of interest has become the clarification of unnecessarily complicated documents, in terms of how they are written and designed. In Simply Put and the Writing Clinic (which he set up as a virtual co-operative), he works on his own, with designers and with others to enable clients to communicate more clearly and more efficiently with their readers.

For The Publishing Training Centre, Andrew’s main focus is on editorial activity, but he has an equal interest in the process of writing and the presentation skills of grammar and punctuation, and he runs three courses in these areas, too. He divides his training time equally between in-company work and open courses.