Oxford Modern English Grammar

This book is not a quick reference guide for the casual reader. The second paragraph of the dust jacket blurb may state, “this grammar assumes no knowledge of grammatical concepts”, but elsewhere on the cover, the appropriate target audience is defined: “undergraduate students and postgraduate students of English language and linguistics”. The subsequent phrase, “and for anyone who needs a clear guide to English grammar”, is misleading. This is a technical, academic reference work.

A glance inside with confirm this. The immediate impression is of example sentences deconstructed into their component parts which are identified by square brackets with subscript...