This text is designed for students who need instruction in grammar, usage, and mechanics. It has the usual round of topics: instructional material on sentences, paragraphs, and essays. But in a departure from tradition, the text also contains six short stories and an essay. In addition to ending with a short story on which exercises and writing assignments are based, every chapter is subdivided into short instructional units that cover a specific topic. Each unit ends with a self-graded review quiz and a battery of self-graded exercises (answers to both are found in the back of the book). The quiz tests the student"s comprehension of the text material; the self-graded exercises, the student"s mastery of concepts. Those exercises generated by the short story at the end of each chapter are reserved for the instructor to grade. An answer booklet is available from the publisher.