Richard Lederer, author of Anguished English and other popular language books, says: "If you love language and the unvarnished truth, you'll love Everything You Know About English Is Wrong. You'll have fun because his lively, comedic, skeptical voice will speak to you from the pages of his word-bethumped book."
FeatureBook.com writes: "The book provides a good counterpoint to Lynne Truss’s anxiety-inducing Eats, Shoots & Leaves and will be enjoyed by everyone who can’t quite admit to being amused by William Safire because they can’t get past his politics. In other words, Brohaugh is funner."
|
|
 |
|
|
9/20/08: Yikes
'Nuff said. Though if that 'nuff isn't enough, read more here.
8/28/08: Your Obligatory Presidential Election Note
 And not just an excuse to re-run the goofy patriotic clown picture (who is not me. Honest.
Here's a bit of fun viral campaigning at work, modified to showcase a bit of viral punctuation that is making some of us word-lovers sick (click the pic or this link for a video.
8/23/08: Jeff and Benjie go to the National Archives!
"This is unconscionable! I can't believe they misspelled British as Brittish! And any whistle-blighted mooncalf knows that you must capitalize United in United States. And hey, Founding Fatheads, we don't spell it Congrefs anymore—get a dictionary! Nice pen-work, Benjie. And . . huh? What's Nicolas Cage doing here?"
What's that all about? It's the imagined followup to two overzealous persnickitors getting slammed—deservedly so—for defacing some national heritage in the spirit of self-righteous grammar policing (not to mention the underlying self-worship involved). Check out the bloggy goodness for details.
8/17/08: Alley Oops
I agree and I don't agree with this cartoon:
The toon is Gasoline Alley, and I ran across it as I was preparing a blog item on Wisconsin English. Wisconsin is my home state, Tomah is my home town, and Gasoline Alley creator Frank King grew up in Tomah.
Current Alley cartoonist Jim Scancarelli likely has heard of Tomah, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if he'd ever visited. I'm back there occasionally; my mom wishes the visits were more frequent, I know. Thomas Wolfe is right in this regard; you can't go home again. But unlike Scancarelli's character, I'm not glad of it. My roots there were humble, and I don't want to return to the specific physical and financial situations surrounding my roots. But I'm always happy to return to the people who nurtured those roots.
I'm also happy to return to some of the regionalisms in Wisconsin phrases and in Wis-CAHN-sin pronunciation. It was fascination with same that led me to the Wisconsin Englishes website, and subsequently to this recent Gasoline Alley cartoon, and ultimately to thoughts of home again.
8/3/08: The hills are alive with the sound of musing
I had the pleasure of appearing on WGN Radio's Nick Digilio show last week, talking about language misconceptions and abuses. (Technically, it was a pleasurable reappearance, as Nick had invited me to talk about my The Grill of Victory a couple of years back. Apparently I didn't say "uh" and "umm" too many times the first time through). Nick and his callers asked some great questions and provided some strong opinion about and insight into the language.
To listen to our conversation, or to hear the Chicago weather forecast for July 25, 2008, click here.
Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Open Your Mouth Again
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. As a language maven (maven is a cool word, isn't it?), not to mention a former editor of Writer's Digest and the author of Unfortunate English, I'll be your tour guide on this delightful journey through the English language, pointing out all the misconceptions about our wonderful—and wonderfully confusing—mother tongue. Tackling words, letters, grammar and rules, no sacred cow remains untipped as this book 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.
- Winston Churchill did not say "That is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I shall not put."
- Emoticons: Unpleasant punctuational predictions:)
- The scoffing word bull is not short for the word often abbreviated to BS.
- And lots of other non-bull about the language.
"Better plotted than a glossary, more riveting than a thesaurus, more filmable than a Harry Potter index-and that's just Brohaugh's footsnorts... I mean, feetsnotes...umfeetsneets?...good gravy I'm glad I'm just a cartoonist." --John Caldwell, one of Mad magazine's Usual Gang of Idiots
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.)
|
|
|
