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| | How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar | | | | | ISBN13: 9780393327236.
Condition: NEW.
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| | Author : | | William Safire | | Publisher : | | W.W. Norton & Co. | | Pub. Date : | | 2005-07-18 | | Edition : | | Paperback, 160 Pages | | ISBN # : | | 039332723X | | Inventory : | | 24 Available | | Store Price : | | $13.95 | | Artistopia's Price: $10.04 | | |
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| | | | Customer Reviews of This Item | |  Clever Beyond Words
Submitted on: 2008-10-14 | | | 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. | | | | Fifty nifty rules for writing readable prose.
Submitted on: 2008-10-10 | | | 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 recommended. | | | |  Irritating, pedantic, but instructive
Submitted on: 2006-08-12 | | Relevant cliché: learn the rules, then break them.
If you can spare one to two hours, give this book a try. There are worse ways to spend that time.
I would not recommmend sticking to every "rule", though. I would have given this book two stars 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. | | | | Loved it!
Submitted on: 2006-06-05 | | 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 almost anyone can understand.
The only part that left me confused was when to use "if I was" and "if I were." I'm still not sure exactly what the difference is between those two and must confess that I'm one of those sloppy writers who uses "if I were" indiscriminately!
Great read and very humorous. Highly recommended. Sentence fragments notwithstanding, I found a great deal of important info in this book.
Sigrid Macdonald
Author and Editor | | | | A Fun Way to Learn 'When, Where, Why, How, Who.'
Submitted on: 2006-01-17 | | This instruction guide to good writing was entertaining, as meant to be, but 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 about fifteen years ago, so perhaps this is a bit outdated. He gives the most common mistakes of writers. What about the most 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 didn't mention misspellings. He did go on about colloquialisms, cliches and euphemisms but 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 don't 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.' But, 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 good 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, no one will listen, or read your work. I'm sure he has a good column on language in the New York paper, but I have not seen it. I did, however, enjoy playing around with this little book. Grammar can be fun! | | | |
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