When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It

With one waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious exuberance. Read If You Catch an Adjective, Kill It and: Learn how to write better with classic advice from writers like Mark Twain ("If you catch an adjective, kill it"), Stephen King ("I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs"), and Gertrude Stein ("Nouns...are completely not interesting") Marvel at how a single word can shift from adverb ("I did okay"), to adjective ("It was an okay movie"), to interjection ("Okay!"), to noun ("I gave my okay"), to verb ("Who okayed this?"). Avoid the pretentious preposition "at," a favorite of real estate developers (e.g., "The Shoppes at White Plains"). Laugh when Yagoda says he "shall call anyone a dork to the end of his days" who insists on maintaining the distinction between "shall" and "will." Discover a book whose pop culture references, humorous asides, and bracing doses of discernment and common sense convey Yagoda's unique "sense of the beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language."