1. The Perfect Tense SystemThe perfect is not a tense but a backward look. Only the point you look from changes.
2. Future Continuous and Future PerfectTwo forms that look at the future from inside it: one through the window of a process, one from past the finish.
4. Mixed ConditionalsA condition from one time, a consequence from another. That is how people actually talk about life.
5. Wish, If Only, and Unreal PastAfter wish a past form marks not past time but dissatisfaction with how things are.
6. Modal Verbs about the PastA modal plus have plus the third form. One structure for judging everything in the past.
7. Extended Uses of the Passive VoiceThe passive can do everything the active can. It all comes down to the chain of be before the third form.
8. Have and Get Something DoneA way to say the work was not done by you. And the same form says something was done to you.
9. Reporting Verbs and Their PatternsOne precise verb reports both the words and the intention. But each of them demands a frame of its own.
10. Passive Reporting StructuresThe structure of news and academic writing: to say that people think so, and name nobody.
11. Complex Relative ClausesTwo commas, one preposition and the word whose. That is what precision in a complex sentence is built from.
12. Reduced Relative ConstructionsDrop the who and the form of be, and the sentence loses two words and nothing else.
13. Participle ClausesAn opening phrase always belongs to the subject of the main clause. Forget that and nonsense follows.
14. Gerunds and Infinitives with Meaning ChangesThe to form looks forward, the ing form looks back. Every meaning pair grows from that.
15. Noun ClausesA whole clause can be slotted inside another sentence and handled exactly like a noun.
16. Advanced Embedded QuestionsDo you know takes a yes or a no. Do you think no longer allows either.
17. Inversion after Negative AdverbialsFront a negative and the sentence starts behaving like a question while staying a statement.
18. Emphasis ConstructionsThe fact stays the same and the emphasis moves. To do that, English cuts the sentence in two.
19. Ellipsis and SubstitutionEnglish hates repetition. Instead of the second verb, only the auxiliary remains.