Guide to spelling, punctuation and grammar

Opening paragraph
The catalyst that led to the outbreak of the First
World War was the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austrian-
Hungarian empire, by a Serbian nationalist on
June 24, 1914. A month later hostilities broke out,
but Europe had been lurching towards a major war
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for a considerable time before that. The shooting of
an obscure member of the Austrian aristocracy was
merely the starting-gun for the war, not the central
cause. The basic cause of the conflict was the rivalry
between the major powers, Germany and its ally,
Austria and its Austrian-Hungarian Empire,
(known as the Central Powers) on the one side, and
Britain, France and Russia (known as the Entente)
on the other. The issues that divided these two power
blocs were the balance of power in Europe as a whole,
the search for colonial territories and the expansion
of wealth and influence.