"Generations of student writers have been subjected to usage handbooks that proclaim, "This is the correct form. Learn it"--books that lay out a grammar, but don't inspire students to use it. By contrast, this antihandbook handbook, presenting some three hundred sentences drawn …
"Angst over the apostrophe and hysteria over hyphens: the English language has become a combat zone. Why are people so passionate about language? How has the fighting over English usage come about?" "David Crystal charts the clashes from Anglo-Saxon times via the language of Sha…
This is the story of the battles both past and present surrounding English usage. So many of us are made to feel ashamed of how we use our language, but in this lively and authoritative contribution to the debate David Crystal argues for a more rational and balanced approach.
"Angst over the apostrophe and hysteria over hyphens: the English language has become a combat zone. Why are people so passionate about language? How has the fighting over English usage come about?" "David Crystal charts the clashes from Anglo-Saxon times via the language of Sha…
Using traditional sentence diagraming as a visual tool, the book explains how to expand simple sentences into compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, and how to employ verbals (infinitives, gerunds, and participles).
"Harry Evans has edited everything from the urgent files of battlefield reporters to the complex thought processes of Henry Kissinger. He's even been knighted for his services to journalism. In DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?, he brings his indispensable insight to us all in his definit…
Usage guides, or language advice manuals, are being published in large numbers, both in Britain and the US. The first titles that usually spring to mind are Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926) or Sir Ernest Gowers's Complete Plain Words (1954). Yet as a phenomenon, they are muc…
