Today's tip continues our response to a reader who asked about books for people "with a serious lack of grammar skills."

The Handbook of Current English ($47) by Jim W. Corder and John J. Ruszkiewicz discusses basic stuff that you don't find many other places and makes it all easy to find. It covers subjects like sentence fragments, verb tense, and punctuation pretty thoroughly. The second half contains advice about composition (organizing materials, writing a first draft, etc.). The whole thing is intended for college undergrads, so it's probably about right for the novices our reader describes.

Grammar for Grownups, A Self-Paced Training Manual by Diane Lutovich ($45) is another basic workbook that can help you say what you mean intelligibly and avoid potentially embarrassing mistakes. Each chapter (parts of speech, parts of sentences, pronouns, verbs, articles, punctuation, confusing words) has practice exercises, followed by answers, so you can check your work.

The Random House Handbook by Frederick Crews ($43) is another good resource for the fundamental stuff.