Overview

I don’t know how else to tell you this…everything you know about English is wrong. Now that you know, it’s time to, well, bite the mother tongue. William Brohaugh, former editor of Writer’s Digest, will be your tour guide on this delightful journey through the English language, pointing out all the misconceptions about our wonderful—and wonderfully confusing—native tongue. Tackling words, letters, grammar and rules, no sacred cow remains untipped as Brohaugh reveals such fascinating and irreverent shockers as:--If you figuratively climb the walls, you are agitated/frustrated/crazy. If you literally climb the walls, you are Spiderman.--“Biting the Mother Tongue”: English does not come from England.--The word “queue” is the poster child of an English spelling rule so dominant we'll call it a dominatrix rule: “U must follow Q! Slave!”--So much of our vocabulary comes from the classical languages—clearly, Greece, and not Grease, is the word, is the word, is the word. --Emoticons: Unpleasant punctuational predictions. This book guarantees you’ll never look at the English language the same way again—if you write, read or speak it, it just ain’t possible to live without this tell-all guide. (“Ain’t,” incidentally, is not a bad word.)

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9781402211355

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William Brohaugh is the former editor of Writer’s Digest magazine and the former editorial director of Writer’s Digest Books. He is the author of Unfortunate English and Professional Etiquette for Writers, and is the director of English through the Ages. He lives in Amelia, Ohio.

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