Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite
Here's some good news for everyone who's ever been bullied into believing they can't speak their own language: The grammar snobs are bluffing. Half the "rules" they use to humiliate others are really just judgment calls and the rest they don't even understand themselves. Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is a laugh-out-loud funny collection of anecdotes and essays on grammar and punctuation, as well as hilarious critiques of the self-appointed language experts.In this collection of...
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In this collection of hilarious anecdotes and essays on grammar and punctuation, Casagrande delivers practical language lessons not found anywhere else, demystifying the subject and taking it back from the snobs. Simultaneous paperback. Unabridged. 5 CDs. Mindy Hardwick - Children's Literature Grammar snobs are lurking. They are ready to offer their services with anything but a gentle approach. Who really knows how to use the word whom? Most of us. It's just common sense. On the other hand, very few of us understand commas. This book includes short essays on topics such as prepositions, dangling modifiers, commas, colons, semicolons, and every grammar rule in-between. This lively book with humorous essays is a sure winner with adults; however, it is questionable for the teen reader set. In order to make the essays more appealing to for teens, more teen-friendly examples and language are needed. Librarians and teachers might want to look at a copy of this for their own shelves, but are better off to skip buying a book for the school or classroom library. 2006, Penguin, Ages 18 up.
Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies Introduction: Grammar Snobs Make Good Prison Brides\ 1. A Snob For All Seasons—Shared Possessives\ 2. For Whom The Snob Trolls—"Who"/"Whom" and Why You're Right Not to Care\ 3. Passing The Simpsons Test— It's "Till," Not "Til"\ 4. To Boldly Blow—Only Windbags Fuss over Split Infinitives\ 5. The Sexy Mistake—"To Lay" versus "To Lie"\ 6. Snobbery Up With Which You Should Not Put—Prepositions\ 7. Is That A Dangler In Your Memo Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?\ 8. An Open Letter To Someone Who Knows I Once Tried To Be A Grammar Snob But Failed—"Dreamed" versus "Dreamt," "Preventive" versus "Preventative," and Similar Pairs\ 9. Anarchy Rules— "Adviser"/Advisor," "Titled"/"Entitled," and Other Ways to Be Right and Wrong at the Same Time\ 10. The Comma Denominator—Good News: No One Knows How to Use These Things\ 11. Semicolonoscopy—Colons, Semicolons, Dashes, Hyphens, and Other Probing Annoyances\ 12. The O.C.: Where The '80s Never Die—Lessons on the Apostrophe from Behind the Orange Curtain\ 13. Go Ahead, Make Up Your Own Words—Prefixes and Suffixes and Why the Dictionary Thinks You're Wrong\ 14. Hyphens: Life-Sucking, Mom-And-Apple-Pie-Hating, Mime-Loving, Nerd-Fight-Inciting Daggers Of The Damned\ 15. I'll Take "I Feel Like A Moron" For $200, Alex—When to Put Punctuation Inside Quotation Marks\ 16. A Chapter Dedicated To Those Other Delights Of Punctuation\ 17. Copulative Conjunctions: Hot Stuff For The Truly Desperate—Conjunctions to Know and Conjunctions That Blow\ 18. R U Uptite?—Shortcuts in the Digital Age and the Meanies Who Hate Them\ 19. Literally Schmiterally\ 20. How To Drop Out Of High School In The Ninth Grade And Still Make Big Bucks Telling People How To Use Good Grammar—"That" versus "Which"\ 21. Well, Well, Aren't You Good?—Adverbs Love Action\ 22. Fodder For Those Mothers—"Irregardless" and Other Slipups We Nonsnobs Can't Afford\ 23. I Wish I Were Batgirl—The Subjunctive Mood\ 24. Mommy's All Wrong, Daddy's All Wrong—The Truth about "Cans" and "Dones"\ [25. The Kids Are All Wrong—"Alright," Dropping "The" Before "the The," Where to Put Your "Only," and Other Lessons from the World of Rock 'n' Roll\ 26. How To Impress Brad Pitt—"Affect" versus "Effect"\ 27. And You Too Can Begin Sentences With "And," "So," "But," And "Because"\ 28. Your Boss Is Not Jesus—Possessives and Words Ending in "S," "X," and "Z"\ 29. The Silence Of The Linguists—Double Possessives and Possessives with Gerunds\ 30. I'm Writing This While Naked—The Oh-So-Steamy Predicate Nominative\ 31. I Wish I May, I Wish I Might For Once In My Life Get This One Right—"May" versus "Might," "Different From" versus "Different Than," "Between" versus "Among," and Other Problematic Pairs\ 32. A Backyard Barbecue In The Back Yard, A Front-Yard Barbecue In The Front Yard—The Magical Moment When Two Words Become One\ 33. How To Never, Ever Offend Anyone With Inadvertently Sexist Or Racist Language\ 34. Complete Sentences? Optional!\ 35. It's/Its A Classroom Ditz—Or How I Learned to Stop Fuming and Love the Jerkwad\ 36. Eight, Nine, 10, 11—How to Write Numbers\ 37. If At First You Don't Irk A Snob, Try And Try Again—"Try To" versus "Try And"\ 38. Express Lane Of Pain—"Less Than" versus "Fewer Than"\ 39. Agree To Dis A Meanie—Subject-Verb Agreement, Conjugating Verbs for "None" and "Neither," and Other Agreement Issues\ 40. The Emperor's New Clause—Pronouns That Are Objects and Subjects, "Each Other" versus "One Another," and More Evidence That the "Experts" Aren't All They're Cracked Up to Be\ 41. Satan's Vocabulary\ 42. You Really Can Look It Up Acknowledgments Sources
\ Children's LiteratureGrammar snobs are lurking. They are ready to offer their services with anything but a gentle approach. Who really knows how to use the word whom? Most of us. It's just common sense. On the other hand, very few of us understand commas. This book includes short essays on topics such as prepositions, dangling modifiers, commas, colons, semicolons, and every grammar rule in-between. This lively book with humorous essays is a sure winner with adults; however, it is questionable for the teen reader set. In order to make the essays more appealing to for teens, more teen-friendly examples and language are needed. Librarians and teachers might want to look at a copy of this for their own shelves, but are better off to skip buying a book for the school or classroom library. 2006, Penguin, Ages 18 up. \ —Mindy Hardwick\ \
