Availability:
Library | Call Number | Format | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Abington Public Library | 428 CUR | NEW BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Braintree Thayer Public Library | 428 CUR | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Brockton Public Library | ON ORDER | NEW BOOK LOCAL HOLDS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Brockton Public Library | ON ORDER | NEW BOOK LOCAL HOLDS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Canton Public Library | 428 C | NEW BOOK LOCAL HOLDS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Cohasset Paul Pratt Memorial Library | 428 CUR | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Duxbury Free Library | 428.2 CUR | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Hingham Public Library | 428 CUR | NEW BOOK LOCAL HOLDS | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Milton Public Library | 428 CUR | NEW BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Norwell Public Library | 428 CU | BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Plymouth Public Library | 428 CUR | 14 DAY BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Searching... Weymouth Tufts Library | 428 CUZ 2024 | 14 DAY BOOK | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A kinder, funner usage guide to the ever-changing English language and a useful tool for both the grammar stickler and the more colloquial user of English, from linguist and veteran professor Anne Curzan
"I was bowled over, page after page, by the author's fine ear for our language and her openhearted erudition. I learned a lot, and I couldn't have enjoyed myself more."--Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English
Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living, breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes beyond "right" and "wrong" to empower us to make informed language choices. Never snooty or scoldy (yes, that's a "real" word!), this book explains where the grammar rules we learned in school actually come from and reveals the forces that drive dictionary editors to label certain words as slang or unacceptable.
Linguist and veteran English professor Anne Curzan equips readers with the tools they need to adeptly manage (a split infinitive?! You betcha!) formal and informal writing and speaking. After all, we don't want to be caught wearing our linguistic pajamas to a job interview any more than we want to show up for a backyard barbecue in a verbal tux, asking, "To whom shall I pass the ketchup?" Curzan helps us use our new knowledge about the developing nature of language and grammar rules to become caretakers of language rather than gatekeepers of it. Applying entertaining examples from literature, newspapers, television, and more, Curzan welcomes usage novices and encourages the language police to lower their pens, showing us how we can care about language precision, clarity, and inclusion all at the same time.
With lively humor and humanity, Says Who? is a pragmatic and accessible key that reveals how our choices about language usage can be a powerful force for equity and personal expression. For proud grammar sticklers and self-conscious writers alike, Curzan makes nerding out about language fun.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this spirited treatise, Curzan (Fixing English), an English professor at the University of Michigan, argues that readers should embrace the flexibility of language. "Debates about language are almost always about more than language," she writes, reflecting on how power and authority affect what's considered proper usage. Curzan explains that standardized English isn't inherently more correct than other forms (hisself, she explains, actually follows the grammatical pattern established by myself, yourself, and herself more closely than himself does), it's just the iteration chosen by "speakers with social, political, and economic power" to be the one against which others are judged. Readers should accept the evolving meaning of such contested phrases as "more unique," Curzan contends, positing that though the phrase dilutes the literal definition of unique, such shifts in meaning are common and unavoidable (the definition of decimate was initially "kill one in every ten"). Instead of striving to evaluate whether usage is "correct," Curzan encourages considering whether a "word is working effectively in context." For instance, she suggests that as literally becomes increasingly understood to also mean figuratively, readers should be careful to "avoid unnecessary ambiguity" in formal writing while recognizing that its conversational use as an intensifier usually does little to impede understanding. Chock-full of fascinating trivia and persuasively argued, this will give grammar sticklers pause. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Mar.)
Booklist Review
Ever evolving, the English language confounds those who demand hard-and-fast rules for usage, grammar, and punctuation. Nevertheless, writers, editors, and publishers want to impose structure and uniformity on their output to ensure that readers clearly comprehend a text's intent. Curzan, a dean and professor of English at the University of Michigan, sums up what she's learned about how the written language works. As a linguist, Curzan favors descriptive over prescriptive; she is loath to judge one person's expression against another's. She offers up two categories of English language enthusiasts: Wordies, who are fascinated with words and how people use them, and Grammandos, who obsess over "correct" and "standard" usage. She delves into contemporary meanings of such words as like, literally, good/well, hopefully, and many more. She addresses the function and use of pronouns, looking for some structure in our current age of gender neutrality. Her observations on the history of capitalization, commas, and apostrophes will perhaps soothe anxieties of writers so often perplexed by their quandaries. But those demanding absolute regulations to follow may be flummoxed. Curzan lays forth her incomparable erudition with deft lightheartedness that will appeal to wordies at all levels.
Library Journal Review
This cheerful usage guide for the English language stresses context, style, consistency, and kindness over supposedly immutable rules. Making grammatical decisions is effectively presented as an inner conflict that pits a writer or speaker's personal "grammando" (grammar stickler) against their "wordie" (appreciator of linguistic flexibility and creativity). Curzan (English and linguistics, Univ. of Michigan; Fixing English) explores many points of grammatical confusion that give rise to such conflicts between grammando and wordie. She uses broad categories to first identify common grammatical conundrums such as punctuation, verb forms, word order, and pronouns. Within each category, she then examines specific examples in greater detail, such as when and how to use double negatives, why "funnest" could be a word, and why the passive voice is sometimes useful. Curzan humanizes her own grammatical decisions with stories from her life as a linguist. She also invokes the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, which until 2018 voted annually on preferred usage, as a barometer of changes over time. VERDICT Highly recommended for all writers and speakers of English who want to understand why the language works the way it does.--Karen Bordonaro
Excerpts
Excerpts
Introduction The wedding was at a swanky hotel in Boston, and I was early. I picked up my table card and was milling about before the ceremony in a little black dress and higher heels than I can mill about in comfortably. Unable to find anyone I knew nearby, I introduced myself to a friendly-looking couple about my age with a ten-year-old boy who was not-so-subtly trying to loosen his necktie. After exchanging pleasantries, the mother and I turned to questions about what we each did professionally. She worked as an editor, and when she learned that I study the history of the English language and that I was writing a usage guide, her face lit up. "Oh, you're my new best friend!" she exclaimed. "I have so many questions for you. We could talk for hours!" It's a well-kept secret that being a grammar geek can occasionally be good for your social life. My new best friend went on, "Okay, let's start with impact as a verb. I can't stand that! What do you think?" I paused, knowing that the conversation was about to get dicey. "Listen," I replied, "I get it. My pet peeve is the adjective impactful --it sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. But, honestly, I think we're both going to have to stand down. Impact is a verb and there's nothing grammatically wrong with impactfu l. And, clearly, lots of other people think these words are useful." I tell this story to highlight that almost all of us notice things in the English language that we wish, well, weren't in the English language. There are some peeves that are widely shared, such as impact as a verb to mean 'affect,' and there are others that seem to be idiosyncratic: For example, I regularly get emails from an astute language observer who is concerned about the spread of the preposition toward into expressions such as dismissive toward and express gratitude toward . I hadn't noticed this linguistic phenomenon until he pointed it out--and, for what it's worth, I have no strong feelings about it. As far as I can tell, it is human nature to notice language, both consciously and unconsciously. We make a mental note of some of the new words and new bits of grammar that we hear and see around us, exactly because they are novel. And when we travel to new regions and/or meet new people, we can't help but observe some of the differences we hear in the language. Some of us may notice when speakers don't follow a so-called rule that we learned from a trusted language authority. I'm all for this kind of noticing: It shows our fundamental curiosity about how language works--how it varies from speaker to speaker and how it changes over time. A key question for all of us then to consider is what we do with our observations. Do we feel compelled to judge that new word or usage as illegitimate? Or do we congratulate ourselves on spotting a new word or bit of grammar? Should we jump in and correct someone when we think they made a grammatical mistake? Or should we stand back and admire how language changes and evolves right before our eyes? If you care about words--like I do and, as someone who picked up this book, you do--you probably have an inner grammando . The new word grammando was introduced in March 2012 in Lizzie Skurnick's feature "That Should Be a Word" in The New York Times Magazine. Here's her definition: Grammando: (Gruh-MAN-doh), n., adj. 1. One who constantly corrects others' linguistic mistakes. "Cowed by his grammando wife, Arthur finally ceased saying 'irregardless.'" Clever and evocative, the word grammando strikes me as an excellent alternative to both grammar stickler and grammar Nazi. If we're going to talk about Nazis, let's talk about Nazis. If we're going to talk about people who correct other people's grammar, let's talk about grammandos (even though the word is not yet accepted by the spellchecker that is checking my spelling as I write this). There's another new word-- wordie --that captures the alternative to being a grammando. Added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2018, wordie describes someone who delights in language's shifting landscape. Wordies know the language rules and where they come from, and then they make informed calls about whether or not to follow the rule in a given context. Wordies are the skilled bird-watchers of language, taking pleasure in observing how different speakers creatively deploy the language and how language is changing. Given that you've chosen to read a usage book with the word funner in the title, you almost certainly have an inner wordie who lives alongside your inner grammando. Welcome to my world! When I notice a new species in the language out in the wild (metaphorically speaking) and have an urge to stamp it out--that's my inner grammando talking. When I delight in learning from young people about the rules of texting and new slang, my inner wordie has the upper hand. We all have our language peeves--those bits of language that grate on our nerves and that make us want to pull out a red pen while reading or stop someone midsentence to go grammando on them. (Yes, them --see chapter 18 for an explanation of how they can be singular.) And the question at any one of these peevey moments is whether to let our inner grammando say anything or let our inner wordie carry the day. This book will help you sort out when your inner grammando might have useful guidance and when your inner wordie should override concerns that something's "wrong." Believe me, I have had lots of practice. My mother was a grammando when I was growing up. I was taught to say "This is she speaking" on the phone when someone called for me, and it was certainly "He is shorter than I," not "He is shorter than me." You are well, not good, and you drive slowly, not slow. I spent many an evening at the kitchen table nervously watching my mother, a trained editor, poring over my school papers and marking up grammatical missteps. I am to this day a meticulous copy editor, noticing every comma and inconsistency in usage. As my sisters and I got older, this attention to grammar became more endearing than frightening, and one of our favorite family stories involves a moment when my mother's inner grammando got the better of her at, of all places, a wedding. My older sister's wedding, in fact. It was the rehearsal dinner, and, in the middle of her toast, my younger sister let slip out of her mouth the phrase "for my husband and I." From the back of the room, my mother interjected, "And me!" We all laughed, and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this story in my career as a linguist. But this kind of public grammar policing can be cringeworthy. And silencing. Think about a moment when you had your language corrected in front of other people and how that felt. Or even a moment when someone pointed out something about your language such that you became self-conscious about it. In my second year of graduate school, I was studying regional variation in American dialects, and I learned about what linguists call "positive anymore ": the use of anymore in a positive declarative to mean 'nowadays.' As an East Coaster, I don't do this; I use anymore only in a negative declarative such as "I don't eat red meat anymore." Shortly after reading about this largely Midwestern construction, I was talking to a triathlete friend about how he could find everything he needed at the local superstore, and he said, "They sell energy bars there anymore." I perked right up and exclaimed, "You're a positive anymore speaker!" He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, suddenly unsure how to continue talking with a person who seemed to be listening more to his word choice than to what he was saying. Despite my obvious enthusiasm for how he spoke, the conversation ended quickly and awkwardly. I learned an important lesson about the power of grammatical knowledge from that conversation. And I wasn't even going grammando on him! I was excited to hear this novel dialect feature (that is, novel to me) out "in the wild," and I didn't mean to make him feel uncomfortable about his language. But I had. Language is deeply personal and fundamentally social. We use it to express ourselves and connect with others--and to push them away. Our language says a lot about who we are and where we come from, so when we point out something about other people's language, it is almost impossible for the comment not to feel personal. Excerpted from Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares about Words by Anne Curzan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
Introduction | vii |
Part 1 Who's in Charge Here? | 1 |
1 Inner grammando vs. inner wordie showdown | 3 |
2 Ain't: what gets into dictionaries, and how | 12 |
3 Double negatives: how rules become rules | 21 |
4 "Pc" language; why emotions run high | 30 |
Part 2 What does that word mean? | 41 |
5 The funnest chapter | 43 |
6 Verbing | 51 |
7 Feeling hopeful about hopefully | 58 |
8 Quite literally | 65 |
9 Because like | 75 |
10 Gender-neutral chairs | 81 |
Part 3 What's the difference? | 89 |
11 Ask, aks, and asterisk | 91 |
12 Counting less/fewer things | 98 |
13 Data and other disputed plurals | 102 |
14 Different from/than between and among | 108 |
15 Driving safe or safely | 117 |
16 Well, i'm good | 125 |
17 Having proved or proven it | 130 |
Part 4 Which pronoun to pick? | 139 |
18 The singularity of they | 141 |
19 For who(m) the bell tolls | 150 |
20 Between you and me/i/myself | 157 |
21 None is/are confusing | 166 |
22 Which-hunting | 175 |
Part 5 Where does that punctuation go? | 183 |
23 Commas, commas, and commas | 185 |
24 Rolling stops with semicolons | 198 |
25 The wild west of dashes and hyphens | 205 |
26 When it's its and other apostrophe conundrums | 212 |
27 Bequeathing capital letters | 221 |
Part 6 How stylish is that sentence? | 229 |
28 To boldly split infinitives | 231 |
29 Prepositions not to end a sentence with | 237 |
30 When and can start a sentence | 246 |
31 The perceived danger of danglers | 253 |
32 Passives were corrected | 261 |
33 Why writing doesn't "flow" | 274 |
Epilogue navigating grammandos and good sense | 284 |
Acknowledgments | 291 |
Notes | 295 |
Index | 311 |