Grammer and puntuations

My growing suspicion that President Bush really made that grammatical faux pas sent me scouring my weblog for similar mistakes. Several typos made my prose seem horribly weak. I cringed every time I zeroed in on bad typing.

I'm not a know-it-all in the case of grammar or punctuation (and I'll never qualify for a spelling bee), but I'd like to think I know enough to get me through some professional writing and editing. However, I've been collecting a stack of cleverly written grammar and style books, a la Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Before this wonderful little book came out, I had in my possession Lapsing Into A Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them, a great title I picked up while working as an editor in Singapore.

Since then, I've come to enjoy reading similar books on style. Even Bill Bryson has contributed with Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words. Years ago, he also wrote a book called The Mother Tongue, about the English language and how it changed with time and with place. American and British English. I'm fascinated by the differences. While working on adapting a British publication for American release, I had to change all British terms to American ones. The typical funny ones were: "rubber" to "eraser" (in the US, condoms are called "rubbers"), "trousers" to "pants" (in the UK, pants assume the same meaning as "underpants" or "underwear"). My piano teacher once told me to never say "I'm stuffed" if I'm in the UK. The phrase has the equivalent meaning of "I've had lots of sex! Ooh, so tired!" ===Apparently, there's no such meaning to the phrase! My teacher must've got it wrong. So ignore this! Thanks to UK resident, May, and UK citizen, Barney.

Anyway, not to veer further from my topic, here's an amateur grammarian's book list:

- Lapsing Into a Comma : A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh

- Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Connor

- Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing by Patricia T. O'Connor

- Sin and Syntax : How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale

- The Deluxe Transitive Vampire : A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

- Torn Wings and Faux Pas : A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer's Labyrinth by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

- The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (yes, the one who wrote Charlotte's Web) (If you choose to have only one book on style, it has to be this one!)

- The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage

- Oxford Fowler's Modern English Usage Dictionary

- Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers by Judith Butcher

- The Cambridge Guide to English Usage by Pam Peters

Posted by Monoceros at June 6, 2004 7:36 AM