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Product Reviews:
How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Clever Beyond Words
Comments: Safire's little booklet is never boring and always educational. In a day and age where bloggers run amog without grammatical concern, Safire pinpoints both the richness and exactness of the English language. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Fifty nifty rules for writing readable prose.
Comments: Safire is a recognized master of our language. In this slender volume, he presents fifty column length articles about the misrules of grammar with humor and patience. I keep it at my elbow whenever I feel the urge to scribble. Well endorseed. |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: Irritating, pedantic, however instructive
Comments: Relevant cliché: learn the rules, then break them.
If you can spare1to2hours, give this book a try. There are worse ways to spend that time.
I would not recommmend sticking to e "rule", though. I would have given this book2stars had it not been for, the at-times, creative and, at-times, funny ways the author presented his "essential misrules".
Having said the above, I have not come across a better book than William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" in this league. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Loved it!!
Comments: This is a real jewel and I liked it better than Lynn Truss's book on grammar. It was funny, insightful and I learned several important things.
Safire has a masterful command of the English language, is concise and direct, and writes in a style that alalmost all anyone can understand.
The only part that left me confused was when to use "if I was" and "if I were." I am still not sure exactly what the difference is between those2and must confess that I am1of those sloppy writers who uses "if I were" indiscriminately!!
Great read and humorous. Highly endorseed. Sentence fragments notwithstanding, I found a great deal of important info in this book.
Sigrid Macdonald
Author and Editor |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: A Fun Way to Learn 'When, Where, Why, How, Who.'
Comments: This instruction guide to great writing was entertaining, as meant to be, however not exactly up-to-date on today's styles. Words have changed; styles of writing have changed; people have changed. Grammar has been my 'thing' since high school and I still tend to write in the old-fashioned way using which instead of that, and I notice that older people who are educated do the same thing.
Outdated slang is as foreign to me as Latin, as I have never been into slang, nor have I tried the pedagogical technique. It appears that he had a similar rule book about15 years ago, so perhaps this is a bit outdated. He gives the almost all common mistakes of writers. What about the almost all common mistakes in grammar when speaking? If people write the way they talk, we really would need an instruction booklet for reference.
Each of the fifty sections used a 'misrule' (sort of a moral of the story for grammar): A Do Not Do This concerning capitals, contractions, prepositions, dangling participles, sentence fragments, double negatives, split infinitives, and onomatopoeia (zap!!). My English professor husband used to love to throw that word at me, as he did 'inimitably' Safire did not mention misspellings. He did go on about colloquialisms, cliches and euphemisms however that's way in the past.
He tells his correct way to write and when it's okay to break his rules. We have a 'grammar expert' who does a short column in the Sunday newspaper who worked as a law clerk. How, I'd like to know, does that make him a grammar guru? He was never an English teacher, and I do not agree with his rule that you can never use enough, or too many, 'thats' -- he's wrong, so I quit looking at his stuff. Only uneducated people use 'that' when they could substitute something clearer like 'who' for people. People are not supposed to be 'thats.' however, that's my pet peeve. He reminds us that it takes a complete thought (noun and verb) to make a sentence; the noun can be omitted when the subject is implied.
A great rule of thumb is to write succinctly and in language which anyone can understand. If you use the big words you might find only in a dictionary, no1will listen, or read your work. I am sure he has a great column on language in the New York paper, however I have not seen it. I did, however, enjoy playing around with this little book. Grammar can be fun!! |
