Intended for the general student of the Indonesian language and the professional linguist, this short descriptive grammar is a useful guide as a well as a point of departure for more intensive study.

This grammar is a description of formal Indonesian in that it is based on published texts rather than on colloquial material. Some fo the texts were delivered as political speeches; some are legal documents such as the Constitution and the Agrarian Laws; some are textbooks intended for use in schools; some are translations of books from other languages, gernerally through the medium of English; and a few are novelettes and stories.