Looking for a good book on English grammar.

I quite like http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679418601/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/.

I'm a big, big fan of this reference book - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0194420981/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/. I'm an ESL teacher, and found it especially valuable in my early years when students would ask grammar questions I wasn't prepared for, like the difference between "made of" and "made from," or when you should use past perfect (and why), and the like. It's got a lot of examples, tries to split as many grammatical hairs as possible, and good, clear explanations. I call it my Bible.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195382757/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521757118/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/, by Thomas Payne. Here's the Product Description from Amazon: "Language is primarily a tool for communication, yet many textbooks still treat English grammar as simply a set of rules and facts to be memorised by rote. This new textbook is made for students who are frustrated with this approach and would like instead to understand grammar and how it works. Why are there two future tenses in English? What are auxiliaries and why are they so confusing? Why are English motion verbs hard to use? Why are determiners so important in English? These and many other frequently asked questions are answered in this handy guide. Student learning is supported with numerous exercises, chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading. An accompanying website offers further resources, including additional classroom exercises and a chance to interact with the author. It is the essential grammar toolkit for students of English language and linguistics and future teachers of English as a Second Language."

That said, I suspect you actually are looking for a style guide.. Seconding this. As a native speaker of English, you already know how to construct grammatical sentences. You might not know what an infinitive is, but you know how to use one. The difference between a sentence that you might create and a sentence that is considered correct in a certain context (such as an academic paper) is a matter of style, not correct grammar--although many confuse the two. A variety of style guides That said, many style guides, including Strunk & White, contain some abominable and/or confusing advice.* Some knowledge of English grammar will help you evaluate it. For example, if you know what a passive construction is you will know that some of the sentences that Strunk & White calls passive often isn't, rendering the advice regarding passive sentences nonsensical. You will also know that a passive sentence is not objectively wrong, and that whether it's a good stylistic choice will depend on the context. For learning about actually grammar, I would recommend http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521431468/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ (Geoffrey Pullum is one of its authors.) It's a descriptivist book rather than a prescriptivist one, and will give you better tools to evaluate your style choices. Read the Amazon description if you think you might be interested. * Unless it's a guide prescribing rules that a certain publisher requires you to follow, then you should always consider it to be advice rather than an absolute.

I just want to issue a brief warning: Do not take The Elements of Style too literally. It's well regarded for its accessibility and its general usefulness, but it is just flat out, objectively wrong about a lot of things. Here is https://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497 with concrete examples. The sloppy treatment of passive voice is particularly insidious. The term is misapplied all the time, and I reckon The Elements of Style is in large part responsible. That said, I suspect you actually are looking for a style guide. Virtually any introductory book on English grammar can give you an overview of the parts of speech and what the terms mean. (E.g., an infinitive verb form is the fundamental verb form. In the case of split infinitives, it refers to verbs with the to particle--that is, 'to run,' 'to go,' etc.. To split an infinitive in that case is to interject an adverb between the 'to' and the other part of the verb. "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is the classic example of a split infinitive. The unsplit version would be 'To go boldly...'. Happily, that rule is widely considered silly, even among prescriptivists these days, so don't sweat it.) Since you are a native speaker, you don't need to commit the rules of grammar to memory. You already know them, whether you can articulate them or not. A style guide will focus on guidelines specific to writing, provide you with hints and tips for punctuation, and for writing clearly and effectively. So I suspect that would serve your needs much better. The best recommendation I can come up with on that count is probably previously recommended (and very widely used) Chicago Manual of Style. It's not perfect, but it is very widely adopted, and I've encountered a lot of people who seemed to genuinely believe that it was somehow objectively accurate. (It isn't, but if you want to appeal to prescriptivists, your best bet is to rely on the most common prescriber.)

When I taught ESL we all swore by the Betty Azar's http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/013049447X/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/.

I still think Burnham's Basic Verbal Skills is the best and most straightforward introductory grammar textbook – it's out of print but http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1877653314/ref=dp_olp_0?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&qid=1314802253&sr=1-38&condition=all.

I have no idea what split infinitives are "to boldly go" is a split infinitive. Your choice whether it sounds affected or poetic. For writing qua writing, check out http://books.google.com/books/about/The_reader_over_your_shoulder.html?id=S40IAAAAMAAJ. Lots of examples of how writing goes wrong.