Reddit reviews Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: First Course

Strictly the first isn't punctuated correctly or it's just wrong - it's two separate clauses and should be written as:

"I want to know: how does the wheel work?"

or

"I want to know; how does the wheel work?"

It really doesn't work otherwise, as written. Especially not without the "?"

The second is more natural English in a declarative way. It is two clauses as well but doesn't require any additional punctuation.

"I want to know how the wheel works."

"works" by itself is perfectly sufficient alone as the verb for the clause. "does work" is redundant - either it is the "work" (function) or its not with just "work".

At best, "does" is sort of an emphatic or particle, with or without the (semi)colon. But like most emphatic/particle words, you have to be careful with how you use them (think "doch" in German). A better choice of emphatic would be:

"I want to know how the wheel really works."

which might be spoken:

"I want to know how the wheel really works."

The reason this sounds better is that "really" is an adverb modifying "works" while "does" is a helping verb for "works" which changes the meaning and structure to something different and interrogative.

If you want to really grok this kind of thing, the two best sources are Strunk and White's Elements of Style (PDF!), and Warriner's English Grammar and Composition. The latter sort of reminds me of a typical programming language book in some ways - nitty-gritty with syntax definitions - they call it "sentence diagramming" but it's really just a alternate visual form of syntax BNF.

Had both of these in high school. Everyone kept both in their book bag all the time. You'd be marked off on grammar on anything written in any class. Very helpful as reference "bibles" for writing English. Yes, my high school was somewhat intense (by US standards, anyway).

I'd check out Warriner's. It's a good continuing textbook style grammar book. I used the Warriner's series through middle and high school. It's a little old, but the grammar hasn't changed. You can probably find a pdf on the internet somewhere. Haven't found it on a non-torrenting site yet. Definitely worth the investment.


Amazon Link of Book I Had in Middle School

Amazon Link for the Complete Guide

Edit: More links

PDF for some overview and practice

Punctuation and Such Guide