The Glamour of Grammar A Guide to the Magic

Early in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author ofWriting Toolsand the forthcomingHelp! For Writers,aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. Now in paperback, this widely praised practical guide demonstrates everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. Above all, Clark teaches readers how to master grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing. In a world where we comminucate more and more through emails and text messages, how you use language matters--even in 140 characters.The Glamour of Grammarprepares readers to captivate with every word.

Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute. He has written or edited sixteen books about writing and journalism, including Writing Tools and his most recent, Help! For Writers. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Introduction: Embrace grammar as powerful and purposeful	p. 1
Words	p. 7
Read dictionaries for fun and learning	p. 9
Avoid speed bumps caused by misspellings	p. 14
Adopt a favorite letter of the alphabet	p. 18
Honor the smallest distinctions even between a and the	p. 21
Consult a thesaurus to remind yourself of words you already know	p. 27
Take a class on how to cross-dress the parts of speech	p. 31
Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike	p. 35
Learn seven ways to invent words	p. 40
Become your own lexicographer	p. 45
Take advantage of the short-word economy of English	p. 49
Learn when and how to enrich your prose with foreign words	p. 55
Points	p. 61
Use the period to determine emphasis and space	p. 63
Advocate use of the serial comma	p. 68
Use the semicolon as a "swinging gate"	p. 72
Embrace the three amigos: colon, dash, and parentheses	p. 77
Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe	p. 82
Take advantage of the versatility of quotation marks	p. 85
Use the question mark to generate reader curiosity and narrative energy	p. 89
Reclaim the exclamation point	p. 94
Master the elliptical art of leaving things out	p. 98
Reach into the "upper case" to unleash the power of names	p. 103
Vary your use of punctuation to create special effects	p. 108
Stamdards	p. 111
Learn to lie or lay, as well as the principles behind the distinction	p. 113
Avoid the "trap" of subject-verb disagreement	p. 117
Render gender equality with a smooth style	p. 121
Place modifiers where they belong	p. 128
Help the reader learn what is "essential" and "nonessential."	p. 131
Avoid case mistakes and "hypergrammar."	p. 135
Be certain about the uncertain subjunctive and other "moody" subjects	p. 138
Identify all sources of ambiguity and confusion	p. 143
Show what is literal and what is figurative	p. 148
Meaning	p. 153
Join subjects and verbs, or separate them for effect	p. 155
Use active and passive verbs in combination and with a purpose	p. 162
Befriend the lively verb to be	p. 168
Switch tenses, but only for strategic reasons	p. 173
Politely ignore the language crotchets of others	p. 179
Learn the five forms of well-crafted sentences	p. 183
Make sentence fragments work for you and the reader	p. 187
Use the complex sentence to connect unequal ideas	p. 193
Learn how expert writers break the rules in run-on sentences	p. 197
Purpose	p. 203
Master the uses of nonstandard English	p. 205
Add a pinch of dialect for flavor	p. 209
Tame taboo language to suit your purposes	p. 215
Unleash your associative imagination	p. 220
Play with sounds, natural and literary	p. 226
Master the distinction between denotation and connotation	p. 231
Measure the distance between concrete and abstract language	p. 238
Harness the power of particularity	p. 244
Have fun with initials and acronyms, but avoid "capital" offenses	p. 251
Master the grammar of new forms of writing	p. 256
Afterword: Live a life of language	p. 263
Words I have misspelled	p. 265
Words I have confused	p. 271
The Glamour of Grammar quick list	p. 277
Acknowledgments	p. 282
Index	p. 285
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The Glamour of Grammar A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English

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Table of Contents

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