How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of Grammar
William Safire
(Author)
Description
How Not to Write is a wickedly witty book about grammar, usage, and style. William Safire, the author of the New York Times Magazine column "On Language," homes in on the "essential misrules of grammar," those mistakes that call attention to the major rules and regulations of writing. He tells you the correct way to write and then tells you when it is all right to break the rules. In this lighthearted guide, he chooses the most common and perplexing concerns of writers new and old. Each mini-chapter starts by stating a misrule like "Don't use Capital letters without good REASON." Safire then follows up with solid and entertaining advice on language, grammar, and life. He covers a vast territory from capitalization, split infinitives (it turns out you can split one if done meaningfully), run-on sentences, and semi-colons to contractions, the double negative, dangling participles, and even onomatopoeia. Originally published under the title Fumblerules.
Product Details
Price
$18.95
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
July 01, 2005
Pages
162
Dimensions
4.8 X 7.72 X 0.52 inches | 0.4 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780393327236
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
As the word maven in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, William Safire is the most widely read writer on the subject of the English language. In addition, he has for the past quarter century written a twice-weekly political column for The New York Times, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. A former speechwriter in the Nixon White House, he is the author of twenty-six books, including his most recent book on language, No Uncertain Terms; Safire's New Political Dictionary; the speech anthology Lend Me Your Ears; and four novels, two of them historical: Scandalmonger, about early nineteenth-century journalist Thomson Callender, and Freedom, a bestseller about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.