Two thousand years ago Marcus Vitruvius Pollio wrote De Architectura, the first known book on engineering. One historian commented: "He writes in atrocious Latin, but he knows his business." Another complained: "He has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task."

Many of us would gladly crank out 10,000 lines of C rather than a single-page report. Yet this is the communications age, and some degree of writing skill is essential. Jane Straus's The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation is a large-format (8.5 x 11) volume of just 104 pages that serves as a practical and useful guide to improving one's use of English.

The first half of the book contains rules of grammar, spelled out using copious examples. It's thought provoking. The sentence "He is one of the men who do the work" is correct. My first thought is to change "do" to "does," but on closer examination it's clear the verb agrees with the plural "men." Yet it still sounds wrong. This is one of those cases where a less awkward rewrite, such as "He does the work with the other men" is probably more appropriate.

Straus fills the second half of the book with exercises accompanied by answers. Anyone struggling with writing challenges will learn a lot by working through these practice sessions.

All in all, the examples and rules make it clear just how puzzling English is. I admire anyone who learns this hodgepodge of random rules and idioms as an adult.