Ripon Public Library

Rebel with a clause, tales and tips from a roving grammarian, Ellen Jovin

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages [362]-363) and index

contains biographical information

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Rebel with a clause

bibliography

1335033276

Ellen Jovin

tales and tips from a roving grammarian

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?

Tales and tips from a roving grammarian