Word Court

by Wallraff, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780151003815
• ISBN10: 0151003815
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

In 1993, the Atlantic Monthly's senior editor Barbara Wallraff began answering grammar questions on America Online. Instantaneously the site became one of AOL's most popular forums, as questions, and responses to Wallraff's responses, came flooding in. This vibrant exchange became the bimonthly "Word Court" in the Atlantic Monthly, and the "Miss Manners of Grammar" was born. In Word Court, Wallraff moves beyond her column to tackle common and uncommon items, establishing rules for such issues as turns of phrase, slang, name usage, punctuation, and newly coined vocabulary. With true wit, she deliberates and decides on the right path for lovers of language, ranging from classic questions-is "a historical" or "an historical" correct?-to awkward issues-How long does someone have to be dead before we should all stop calling her "the late"? Should you use "like" or "as"-and when? The result is a warmly humorous, reassuring, and brilliantly perceptive tour of how and why we speak the way we do.

Author Biography

Barbara Wallraff is a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
Francine Prose
Who Cares	1	(16)
Who does care about grammar and usage questions, how much these people care, and why they are right to
An Aside: Warning	14	(3)
The Elements of Fashion	17	(66)
Our language is a work in progress, and so we must mistrust the advice of long-established usage guides, alas
Neologisms from birthing to funeralized
What increasing sexual equality and tolerance of a range of differences have meant to English, and a plea for still broader tolerance
How social trends toward informality and specialization impact (ouch!) our language
An Aside: House Style	79	(4)
A Grammarian's Dozen	83	(67)
Why you probably know more grammar than you think you do, and why this should please you
A countdown of thirteen common, often misunderstood grammar-related issues, including split infinitives, why I feel well is good grammar and I feel badly is not, ending clauses with prepositions, that versus which, what it is about hopefully, whether Magic are plural in Orlando and Jazz in Utah, what it is about unique, let's keep it between you and me, please, and possessive puzzlements of all sorts
An Aside: Diagramming Sentences	147	(3)
Say No More	150	(136)
An alphabetical usage guide to often abused, confused, and traduced words, from A vs
An to Zeds and Zeros
An Aside: Shelf Life (Useful Reference Books)	276	(10)
Immaterial Questions	286	(64)
Curiosities whose corporeal existence is one way or another in doubt: Questions about words and punctuation which no one has asked
Words that don't exist
Pronunciation issues, invisible on the page
And the mystery of how one expression can manage to say the same thing twice, and whether that's bad or good
Wise to the Words	350	(11)
There is, of course, a wily old elephant in whose eye all of the foregoing is but a mote
Index	361