English Grammar Fundamentals for Writers and Editors

25 Aug 2026
John Linnegar
25 Aug 2026

English Grammar Fundamentals for Writers and Editors

Facilitator: John Linnegar

Dates: 8, 10, 15, 17, 22 September 2026

Time: 18:00 - 21:00 (Tuesdays and Thursdays)

Course fee: R7 500 full fee; UCT staff and students: R6 500: Professional Editors’ Guild members: R6 500

Maximum: 12 participants

Platform: Zoom

Booking through Webtickets: English Grammar Fundamentals for Writers and Editors

Description of the course

The training course comprises five three-hour sessions, with two sessions held each week. It introduces participants to the fundamental building blocks of sentences, different parts of speech, and explores how these elements work together to create clear, grammatically sound writing.

Participants will examine nouns and pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, verbs, determiners and connectors, including conjunctions and prepositions. Each has its own characteristics and function, with some serving as the “cement” that connects the different elements of a sentence. The course also examines punctuation, its role in connecting words, phrases and clauses, indicating relationships between them, and helping to convey an author’s intended meaning.

Each session is supported by practical exercises designed to reinforce the concepts covered. These exercises are assessed by the facilitator and graded, allowing participants to monitor their progress throughout the course. The programme concludes with a post-training assignment, enabling each participant to assess their overall level of proficiency.

Session 1: Introducing the ‘building blocks’ (parts of speech) of sentences 

Subjects, verbs, objects, complements and enlargements and their relationships.

              

 Parts of speech – noun and pronouns

  • The types and nature of nouns

  • Count vs mass nouns; plurals; possessives; gerunds; nouns in apposition

  • The types and nature of pronouns, especially relative pronouns

  • Pronouns as subjects and objects

Session 2: Parts of speech – adjectives

  • The types and nature of adjectives

  • Present and past participles as adjectives

  • Attributive vs predicative adjective

  • Classes of adjective and the punctuation of adjective strings

 

               Parts of speech – adverbs

  • The types and nature of adverbs

  • Sentence adverbs; placement of adverbs with respect to verbs; adjective-adverb    compounds; adverbial phrases and clauses

  • ‘Only’ as either adjective or adverb: placement important

                            

Session 3: Parts of speech – connectors

  • The role of connectors in sentences: coordinating; subordinating

  • Conjunction pairs (correlatives)

  • ‘Whether’ and ‘If … then’ constructions

  • Prepositions: role in sentences; idiomatically correct; at ends of sentences; special cases of onto or on to; into or in to

  • Relative pronouns: which vs that; who vs whom

  • Sentence adverbs: important linking or transition words

 

Parts of speech – articles and other determiners

  • Before ‘h’ or ‘u’: ‘a’ or ‘an’?; when ‘a’ or ‘the’?

  • Determiners: phrasal and prepositional verbs

  • Determiners: singular or plural?

 

Session 4: Parts of speech – verbs

Simple, perfect and continuous: what do they mean? When do we use them? Simple past or past perfect?

  • Regular versus irregular verbs; auxiliary verbs and modal verbs

  • Adjective-verbs (participles) and noun-verbs (gerunds)

  • Past participles and adverbs: do we hyphenate?

  • Splitting the infinitive

 

Agreement between subject and verb

  • Some guidelines on agreement

 

Session 5: The role of punctuation in sentences

The complete set of marks and their contributions to conveying authors’ meaning and indicating pauses and linkages.

About the course facilitator 

John Linnegar is a native English speaker and experienced language teacher who has worked for more than four decades to improve writers’ use of language, including grammar and punctuation. His experience includes teaching English to students for whom it is a foreign language, as well as providing professional editing and language services. John is regularly called upon to undertake style editing, which typically includes reviewing and correcting grammar and punctuation. He has been training individuals in copy-editing and proofreading since 1999, and his online course, English Grammar for Editors, has been running for more than two decades. In addition to authoring a textbook on English grammar, John has contributed a regular column on aspects of English grammar to PEGboard, the newsletter of the Professional Editors’ Guild, for about a decade.