The Rules of the Game

Philip J. Skerry, Ph.D., is emeritus professor at Lakeland Community College, where he taught English and film classes for over forty years. Dr. Skerry has written several books on Alfred Hitchcock and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals.

The Rules of the Game is an examination of Standard Written American English (SWAE), which is the dialect of educated people, and an analysis of the characteristics of that dialect. The book explains the special qualities of SWAE and why it frequently presents problems to students as well as to the general public. The book outlines the two key elements of SWAE: it is both rule bound and conservative. These two elements form the basis of the book's main purpose: the examination of the elements of successful SWAE sentences. Once the elements have been presented in detail in the first half of the book, the second half shows how sentences can go wrong by violating the "rules" of SWAE. The Rules of the Game is more than just a grammar book: it presents the rationale for the strict application of grammar rules that characterizes the dialect so that readers come away with an understanding of why this dialect is so challenging. Whether you are a student faced with writing assignments or a worker having to write reports, you will find The Rules of the Game helpful and useful.