For some very different approaches, I'd recommend four books. Max Morenberg's _Doing Grammar_ is a systematic approach to the syntax of English sentences that covers quite a lot of ground. It uses phrase structure trees but also builds in a fair amount of functional information. Pedagogically, it's a little force-fed, but, on the other hand, I've found that students who've been through it remember grammatical structure pretty well. The trees themselves are not something a linguist would take pleasure in, but they work well for teaching purposes. Lynn Berk's _English Grammar: From Word to Discourse_ is an excellent functionalist account that goes a long ways towards helping the student make sense of not only how the language works but why it works that way. It is at a more advanced, demanding level than Morenberg. Both are from OUP. Mark Lester's new edition of _Grammar and Usage in the Classroom_ has just come out. If you like Reed-Kellogg diagrams, Lester's is the book, because he emphasizes that. He presents some excellent analyses, including treatments of the auxiliary and of phrasal verbs that are among the best I've read in any intro text. If you don't like traditional sentence diagrams, that part of the book will be less satisfying, but he does the most thorough presentation of that traditional and still widely used approach that you'll find in any grammar. If you're more interested in good, sound, carefully argued syntax, I'd recommend James McCawley's _The Syntactic Phenomena of English_, which is now out in a one-volume edition. It's heavier going, but the analyses never fail to fascinate and there can't be a much better coverage of the structure of English sentences. While technical, the book is very well written and very readable. Herb Stahlke Ball State University >>> [log in to unmask] 10/17/00 11:27AM >>> Hello! In college I was an English major and we did not study any grammar. I would like to independently further my studies. Can anyone give me recommendations for books? Thank you, Cheryl Richey