Rebel with a clause : tales and tips from a roving grammarian / Ellen Jovin.
Material type:![Text](/opac-tmpl/lib/famfamfam/BK.png)
- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780358278153
- 0358278155
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
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Main Library | NonFiction | 428.2 J86 | Available | 33111010896856 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A fresh and democratic take on language by a gifted teacher." --Mary Norris
"[Jovin] never hectors, never finger-points; she enlightens and illuminates. This is lovely work." --Benjamin Dreyer
An unconventional guide to the English language drawn from the cross-country adventures of an itinerant grammarian.
When Ellen Jovin first walked outside her Manhattan apartment building and set up a folding table with a GRAMMAR TABLE sign, it took about thirty seconds to get her first visitor. Everyone had a question for her. Grammar Table was such a hit--attracting the attention of the New York Times, NPR, and CBS Evening News--that Jovin soon took it on the road, traveling across the US to answer questions from writers, lawyers, editors, businesspeople, students, bickering couples, and anyone else who uses words in this world.
In Rebel with a Clause, Jovin tackles what is most on people's minds, grammatically speaking--from the Oxford comma to the places prepositions can go, the likely lifespan of whom, semicolonphobia, and more.
Punctuated with linguistic debates from tiny towns to our largest cities, this grammar romp will delight anyone wishing to polish their prose or revel in our age-old, universal fascination with language.
"An unconventional guide to the English language drawn from the cross-country adventures of an itinerant grammarian"--Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 362-363) and index.
When Jovin first walked outside her Manhattan apartment building and set up a folding table with a Grammar Table sign, it took about thirty seconds to get her first visitor. Everyone had a question for her. Jovin soon took it on the road, traveling across the US to answer questions from anyone who uses words in this world. Here she tackles what is most on people's minds, grammatically speaking: from the Oxford comma to the places prepositions can go, the likely lifespan of whom, semicolonphobia, and more. -- adapted from jacket
Grammar table road trips -- Introduction: A table unfolded -- 1. A national obsession : the Oxford comma -- 2. The joy of grammar vocabulary -- 3. "Affect" and "effect" are mean spelling trolls -- 4. Corrections, humility, and etiquette -- 5. Adverbial antics -- 6. How are you? -- 7. Bookzuberance -- 8. Going farther and further -- 9. Texting grammar -- 10. Sentimental speller -- 11. Please____ (lie, lay) down and read this -- 12. The life, times, and punctuation of the appositive -- 13. Weird plurals : your data ____ (is/are) giving me a headache -- 14. Yes, ma'am! -- 15. Accents keep things fresh -- 16. The great American spacing war -- 17. cAPiTaLizAtiON CHAoS -- 18. Contract with confidence! -- 19. The pleasure of pronunciation -- 20. I saw____ (a, an) UFO on Main Street -- 21. Compound sentences -- 22. Semicolonphobia! -- 23. Labyrinthine lists -- 24. Colonoscopy -- 25. Comma volume -- 26. You can read this chapter in five minutes or fewer -- 27. Possessed by apostrophes -- 28. Plural possessive holiday extravaganza -- 29. Peculiar pasts -- 30. Peripatetic past participles -- 31. What's passed is past -- 32. Gerund v. present-participle smackdown -- 33. Horizontal-line lessons--hyphens and dashes, A-Z -- 34. Good fun with bad words -- 35. ... -- 36. Where's that preposition at? -- 37. Faces and facets of "they" -- 38. The precarious case of the pronoun case -- 39. Whom ya gonna call? -- 40. Bewitching whiches -- 41. Punctuation location contemplation -- 42. Subject-verb synchronicity -- 43. More than then -- 44. It's time for "its"! -- 45. More homophonous happenings : 'your" and 'their" -- 46. Had had, that that, do do, do be do! -- 47. The art of writing with your actual hand -- 48. School days -- 49. Grammar boogie -- Tabletop bibliography : what's on the grammar table?