The Glamour of Grammar A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English
by Clark, Roy PeterEdition: Reprint
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2011-09-08
Publisher(s): Little, Brown Spark
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Summary
Early in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author ofWriting Toolsand the forthcomingHelp! For Writers,aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. Now in paperback, this widely praised practical guide demonstrates everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. Above all, Clark teaches readers how to master grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing. In a world where we comminucate more and more through emails and text messages, how you use language matters--even in 140 characters.The Glamour of Grammarprepares readers to captivate with every word.
Author Biography
Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute. He has written or edited sixteen books about writing and journalism, including Writing Tools and his most recent, Help! For Writers. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Table of Contents
| Introduction: Embrace grammar as powerful and purposeful | p. 1 |
| Words | p. 7 |
| Read dictionaries for fun and learning | p. 9 |
| Avoid speed bumps caused by misspellings | p. 14 |
| Adopt a favorite letter of the alphabet | p. 18 |
| Honor the smallest distinctions even between a and the | p. 21 |
| Consult a thesaurus to remind yourself of words you already know | p. 27 |
| Take a class on how to cross-dress the parts of speech | p. 31 |
| Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike | p. 35 |
| Learn seven ways to invent words | p. 40 |
| Become your own lexicographer | p. 45 |
| Take advantage of the short-word economy of English | p. 49 |
| Learn when and how to enrich your prose with foreign words | p. 55 |
| Points | p. 61 |
| Use the period to determine emphasis and space | p. 63 |
| Advocate use of the serial comma | p. 68 |
| Use the semicolon as a "swinging gate" | p. 72 |
| Embrace the three amigos: colon, dash, and parentheses | p. 77 |
| Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe | p. 82 |
| Take advantage of the versatility of quotation marks | p. 85 |
| Use the question mark to generate reader curiosity and narrative energy | p. 89 |
| Reclaim the exclamation point | p. 94 |
| Master the elliptical art of leaving things out | p. 98 |
| Reach into the "upper case" to unleash the power of names | p. 103 |
| Vary your use of punctuation to create special effects | p. 108 |
| Stamdards | p. 111 |
| Learn to lie or lay, as well as the principles behind the distinction | p. 113 |
| Avoid the "trap" of subject-verb disagreement | p. 117 |
| Render gender equality with a smooth style | p. 121 |
| Place modifiers where they belong | p. 128 |
| Help the reader learn what is "essential" and "nonessential." | p. 131 |
| Avoid case mistakes and "hypergrammar." | p. 135 |
| Be certain about the uncertain subjunctive and other "moody" subjects | p. 138 |
| Identify all sources of ambiguity and confusion | p. 143 |
| Show what is literal and what is figurative | p. 148 |
| Meaning | p. 153 |
| Join subjects and verbs, or separate them for effect | p. 155 |
| Use active and passive verbs in combination and with a purpose | p. 162 |
| Befriend the lively verb to be | p. 168 |
| Switch tenses, but only for strategic reasons | p. 173 |
| Politely ignore the language crotchets of others | p. 179 |
| Learn the five forms of well-crafted sentences | p. 183 |
| Make sentence fragments work for you and the reader | p. 187 |
| Use the complex sentence to connect unequal ideas | p. 193 |
| Learn how expert writers break the rules in run-on sentences | p. 197 |
| Purpose | p. 203 |
| Master the uses of nonstandard English | p. 205 |
| Add a pinch of dialect for flavor | p. 209 |
| Tame taboo language to suit your purposes | p. 215 |
| Unleash your associative imagination | p. 220 |
| Play with sounds, natural and literary | p. 226 |
| Master the distinction between denotation and connotation | p. 231 |
| Measure the distance between concrete and abstract language | p. 238 |
| Harness the power of particularity | p. 244 |
| Have fun with initials and acronyms, but avoid "capital" offenses | p. 251 |
| Master the grammar of new forms of writing | p. 256 |
| Afterword: Live a life of language | p. 263 |
| Words I have misspelled | p. 265 |
| Words I have confused | p. 271 |
| The Glamour of Grammar quick list | p. 277 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 282 |
| Index | p. 285 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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