Contributions by Lisa Abney, Patricia Anderson, Albert Camp, Katie Carmichael, Christina Schoux Casey, Nathalie Dajko, Jeffery U. Darensbourg, Dorian Dorado, Connie Eble, Daniel W. Hieber, David Kaufman, Geoffrey Kimball, Thomas A. Klingler, Bertney Langley, Linda Langley, Shane Lief, Tamara Lindner, Judith M. Maxwell, Rafael Orozco, Allison Truitt, Shana Walton, and Robin WhiteLouisiana is often presented as a bastion of French culture and language in an otherwise English environm...

Slang is often seen as a lesser form of language, one that is simply not as meaningful or important as its 'regular' counterpart. Connie Eble refutes this notion as she reveals the sources, poetry, symbolism, and subtlety of informal slang expressions. In Slang and Sociability, Eble explores the words and phrases that American college students use casually among themselves. Based on more than 10,000 examples submitted by Eble’s students at the University of North Carolina at Chape...

This collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.

A special 10th anniversary edition of Roy Peter Clark's bestselling guide to writing, featuring five bonus tools.Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of fifty short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the...

"Very much a manual for the 21st century . . . a welcome addition to the bookshelf of anyone who cares about language-and is willing to argue about it." — New York Times Book ReviewEarly in the history of English, the words "grammar" and "glamour" meant the same thing: the power to charm. Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. In this practical ...

“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.”With wit and irreverence, lexicographer Kory Stamper cracks open the obsessive world of dictionary writing, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it to the knotty q...

America's most influential writing teacher offers an engaging and practical guide to effective short-form writing." How to Write Short is a deeply practical guidebook and an annotated collection of concise gems from some of the world's greatest writers and journalists, not one of them longer than 300 words. Roy's message is clear: great writing is a matter of craft, not word count. How to Wri...

Do you cringe when a talking head pronounces “niche” as NITCH? Do you get bent out of shape when your teenager begins a sentence with “and”? Do you think British spellings are more “civilised” than the American versions? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re myth-informed.In Origins of the Specious, word mavens Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman reveal why some of grammar’s best-known “rules” aren’t—and never were—rules at all. This playfull...

For Who the Bell Tolls is a book that explains the grammar that people really need to know, such as the fact that an apostrophe is the difference between a company that knows its s*** and a company that knows it's s***, or the importance of capital letters to avoid ambiguity in such sentences as 'I helped my Uncle Jack off his horse.'David Marsh's lifelong mission has been to create order out of chaos. For four decades, he has worked for newspapers, from the Sun t...

How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into LiteratureFrom drawing a map of a remembered neighborhood to signing a form releasing yourself to take risks in your work, Roorbach offers innovative techniques that will trigger ideas for all writers.Writing Life Stories is a classic text that appears on countless creative nonfiction and composition syllabi the world over. This updated 10th anniversary edition gives you the same f...

Best-selling guide and essential reference for 20 years, designed to support the composition and style in writing essays and papers. The answers you need for the elements of good writing in forming ideas for the right audience with unity and coherence are here in just six laminated pages. Succinct and to the point, the focus and design of this guide gives you the facts you need so you can review quickly and spend more time on the task of writing.Author Shelley Evans-Marshall, MA pr...

Millions of people around the world communicate better thanks to Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, whose top-rated weekly grammar podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Now she's turning her attention to solving your worst problems—one troublesome word at a time.Are you feeling "all right" or "alright"? Does "biweekly" mean twice a week or every two weeks? Do you run a gauntlet or a gantlet? Is a pair of twins four people or two?The English language ...