This book primarily describes standard written Finnish, but common features of spoken Finnish are presented both as a summary and in the context of normal presentation of the grammar. In addition, widespread “language errors” (i.e., deviations from language norms) are discussed, since the purpose is also to help to understand written and spoken language in the wild.
The book also covers many topics that most grammars do not deal with, such as details of pronunciation, adaption of foreign words into Finnish, various notational conventions that differ from those used in English, and even dialects and poetic language.
The vocabulary of a language, including information about the inflection patterns, as well as the use of phrases belongs to dictionaries and phrase books rather than a manual like this. However, this book contains some information about vocabulary, including word derivation and composition. It also describes forms of common words as used in spoken language, since these are not that well covered in dictionaries. Moreover, meanings of example words are often given in parentheses, when this seems to be relevant to understanding the general description. Consulting a good dictionary is useful, though, especially since the descriptions of meanings in this book are very brief.