Unlike The Truth About Grammar’s mock rage (or raging mockery), Roy Peter Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar takes a witty, sometimes humorous, approach to teaching us what we have forgotten or never learned about “practical English.” Clark crams fifty essays into approximately 260 pages in an attempt to cover the gamut of grammar including words, punctuation, meaning, and standards. I would have liked less discussion about etymology (on which Mr. Clark could dedicate an entire book or three) and more about rules of composition, but I understand that part of grammar’s magic depends on knowledge of words’ evolutions.

Some essays are quite short (fewer than two complete pages) as if Mr. Clark ran out of time, energy, or space to further develop the cogitation. Most essays are illustrated with an example from his own or another’s writing. A few bulleted points (what the author calls keepsakes) hang at the end of each essay but seem like something a C-average business student would add to the end of a PowerPoint presentation in order to cram in as much information as possible whilst mumbling to himself, “Good enough.” Edward Tufte be damned.

I agree with most of his advice. A user of bad grammar is an ineffective community member–but! if the rules can be broken in a creative or whimsical fashion without muddling the message . . . . A community depends on effective communication; effective communication depends on common language; and understanding that language requires all participants play by the same rules.

I disagree with other recommendations: Page 182 keepsake: “Do not be afraid to . . . end a sentence with a preposition.” No, no, no! Nicht gut! “Where are you going to?” And I ask, “To what? To dance, to live, to pitch the tent?” Do not keep this for the sake of my sanity!

On one subject dear to me he disappoints. Essay 16, “Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe,” restates the simple applicable rules but doesn’t mention the growing tendency of adding an apostrophe when pluralising nouns that end in vowels (e.g., example’s). I need all the help I can get to admonish offenders, Mr. Clark.

I appreciate Mr. Clark’s take on social networking sites and tools and their impact on grammar. He optimistically views Twitter as having its own grammar and filled with potential for new forms of creativity and expression. Not everyone, he cautions, will get it or accept it. I believe new technology has always presented a challenge to the proper grammar of the time (think telegrams and instant messaging) but our language seems able to absorb and flourish with the new grammar in part by imposing the old rules on the new techniques and allowing some new conventions to take hold (such as the use of foreign words in formal and informal writing).

Here are a few essay titles from each chapter to give you an idea of what tools are in this box: “Take a class on how to cross-dress the parts of speech,” “Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike,” “Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe,” “Reclaim the exclamation point,” “Learn to lie or lay, as well as the principles behind the distinction,” “Show what is literal and what is figurative,” “Switch tenses, but only for strategic reasons,” “Learn the five forms of well-crafted sentences,” “Unleash your associative imagination,” and “Harness the power of particularity.”

The Glamour of Grammar has fierce competition: in the last thirty days, six English grammar and writing books have been released, according to Amazon.com. This book will have a place on my reference shelf, and I’ll use it for informal writing but not in my work as a technical writer/editor. I have not yet found any spelling errors, though I did see some questionable punctuation that I must investigate in more detail (i.e., it could be a style issue). I thank Mr. Clark for teaching me the origin of “boycott” (page 43), and I think I’ve finally learned the distinctions between lie and lay (Essay 23).

[The publisher provided me a free copy of The Glamour of Grammar for review.]

wrote the below in the item description. Soldiers, fight!

First, it appears that she did not re-read her piece before publishing it. There are numerous extra spaces interspersed throughout.

Second, she wrote “rose” instead of the correct “raised” when discussing AT&T’s past raising of the iPhone ETF.

AT&T recently rose its early termination fee to $325 from $175.

That sort of writing causes one to raise an eyebrow. Yes, rose is a verb form of rise but only as an intransitive verb. In this case, the transitive form of raise should be used because there is an object receiving the action (early termination fee).

These are fairly strong arguments, I highly doubt that consumers on business plans will be able to switch.

Third, comma splices pervade this post. Remember, when two independent clauses appear in a sentence separated by a comma, they have been spliced together. No! Bad, writer! Use a conjunction, semicolon or period.

Full disclosure: I have been a loyal AT&T user since 2007, when the iPhone first debuted—- and I can’t wait to switch to Verizon

Finally, an em dash and a hyphen? This could be a WordPress formatting error (WP will convert three hyphens to an em dash), but she wrote other em dashes correctly. This is something that a careful proofread would solve . . . .

Poor Howie doesn’t seem to understand the industry in which he claims to be a professional. Worse is that any credibility he may have is decimated by his poor spelling and grammar and angry reaction to a benign story. Any client that hires a marketing firm whose employee(s) can’t spell “you’re” deserves whatever it gets; and any client that does not vet this guy’s claims of being a marketing specialist (simply one look at SPM’s website speaks volumes) is a moron.

Grammar matters! It reflects your knowledge, professionalism and credibility. Nothing says amateur, idiot or unprofessional quite like “your an idiot” or “Apple’s for Sale!”

I swear to Jeebus, I am sick and tired of people indiscriminately apostrophizing words! If I see another bee’s, go’s, alway’s, our’s (I’m talking to you, MG Siegler at TechCrunch) or stop’s, I’m going to scream!!!

Tip: Unless you mean to write the possessive form of a noun, just err on the side of caution and leave out the damned apostrophe. If you write like the examples above, you’re probably incapable of comprehending the rules that govern apostrophe usage.

Please refer to Number 17 on the “Everything You Need to Know about Grammar” page.

Case in point:

Get up to 80%? Of what? Or is it whom? Cash back? Or taxes paid for by Adobe?

All the best,

Jeff