Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite

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Penguin, Mar 28, 2006 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 224 pages
What do suicidal pandas, doped-up rock stars, and a naked Pamela Anderson have in common? They’re all a heck of a lot more interesting than reading about predicate nominatives and hyphens. June Casagrande knows this and has invented a whole new twist on the grammar book. Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is a laugh-out-loud funny collection of anecdotes and essays on grammar and punctuation, as well as hilarious critiques of the self-appointed language experts.

Chapters include:

  • I’m Writing This While Naked—The Oh-So Steamy Predicate Nominative

  • Semicolonoscopy—Colons, Semicolons, Dashes, and Other Probing Annoyances

  • I’ll Take "I Feel Like a Moron" for $200, Alex—When to Put Punctuation Inside Quotation Marks

  • Snobbery Up with Which You Should Not Put Up—Prepositions

  • Is That a Dangler in Your Memo or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

  • Hyphens—Life-Sucking, Mom-and-Apple-Pie-Hating, Mime-Loving, Nerd-Fight-Inciting Daggers of the Damned

Casagrande delivers practical and fun language lessons not found anywhere else, demystifying the subject and taking it back from the snobs. In short, it’s a grammar book people will actually want to read—just for the fun of it.

 

Contents

Passing the SIMPSONS TESTIts Till Not Til
3
Is That a Dangler in Your Memo or Are You Just Glad to See
Things
LifeSucking MomandApplePie Hating MimeLoving Nerd
Ill Take I Feel Like a Moron for 200 AlexWhen to Put Punctuation Inside Quotation Marks
A Chapter Dedicated to Those Other Delights of Punctuation
Hot Stuff for the Truly DesperateConjunctions to Know and Conjunctions That Blow
R U Uptite?Shortcuts in the Digital Age and the Meanies Who Hate Them 19 Literally Schmiterally
How to Impress Brad PittAffect versus Effect
And You Too Can Begin Sentences with And So But and Because
Your Boss Is Not JesusPossessives and Words Ending in S x and
The Silence of the LinguistsDouble Possessives and Possessives with Gerunds
Im Writing This While NakedThe OhSoSteamy Predicate Nominative
Wish I May I Wish I Might for Once in My Life Get This One RightMay versus Might Different From versus Different Than Between versus Among...
A Backyard Barbecue in the Back Yard A FrontYard Barbecue in the Front YardThe Magical Moment When Two Words Become
How to Never Ever Offend Anyone with Inadvertently Sexist or Racist Language

How to Drop Out of High School in the Ninth Grade and Still Make Big Bucks Telling People How to Use Good GrammarThat versus Which
Well Well Arent You Good?Adverbs Love Action
Fodder for Those MothersIrregardless and Other Slipups We Nonsnobs Cant Afford
Wish I Were BatgirlThe Subjunctive Mood
Mommys All Wrong Daddys All WrongThe Truth about Cans and Dones
The Kids Are All WrongAlright Dropping The Before the The Where to Put Your Only and Other Lessons from the World of Rock n Roll
Complete Sentences? Optional
ItsIts a Classroom DitzOr How I Learned to Stop Fuming and Love the Jerkwad
Eight Nine 10 11How to Write Numbers
Satans Vocabulary
You Really Can Look It
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About the author (2006)

June Casagrande writes the popular and very humorous "A Word, Please" grammar column for four Los Angeles Times community newspapers. She has written over 900 articles for various newspapers and magazines and has four years of improvisational comedy training.

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