Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them [Paperback]

The book is also annoying for several reasons. This notion that funny makes things more learnable has gotten way out of control. I want to go back to this book time and again but cringe at reading the same joke over and over. I also find the author's relentless name-dropping distracting. How can I concentrate when he's always going on about Nicole and OJ, Muhammad Ali, Newt Gringrich, et al? Then there's the subtle humor he's wont to use to make a point that's often too subtle--you need an extra second or too to deduce the gag.

In sum, the author obviously has a lot to share with us but overdoes the personality thing. When I want hip, subtle, and scads of personality I'll watch 'Friends,' I don't want to see all this in my grammar books.

Nat

You'll find the usual suspects here with clear explanations about how to handle them. Punctuation, grammar and spelling are all covered, from the use of commas to the proper spelling of some famous individuals. The latter is one example of how different this book is. Knowing the proper spelling of Nicolas Cage's name might be entertaining and useful to those working for a newspaper, but I'm not sure it makes for a better reference book.

Some of the "rules" presented here will invariably be treated arbitrarily by the public. Some rules we follow, others just don't sound correct when we speak them so we move on. And sometimes what we think we know is not true at all.

Three examples:

Walsh makes the grammatically correct point that sports teams (or rock bands) with singular names (e.g. The Who, The Orlando Magic, etc.) must be combined with singular verbs. He argues that this is subject-verb agreement. While that is true, people simply don't think this way. The Magic are a team full of individuals. (See, I just made the "mistake" in the previous sentence! I did it without thought.) People don't think of the Magic as a he. They think of the Magic as a them. Just like the Yankees. Walsh dismisses these concerns, but he's ultimately spitting into the wind. People don't talk or think in this manner, subject-verb agreement or no. Fifty years from now someone writing about grammar will lament the fact that no one follows this rule. Get over it.

While Walsh is annoyed by this example, he also states that the current oral tradition of using plural (they, them) instead of singular pronouns (he, she) might trump the grammatical rule. And he's OK with that. I happen to agree with him, but it only weakens his earlier point. If the oral tradition creates the rule in this case then why doesn't it in another?

Then there's at least one example where Walsh is just clearly wrong and, ironically, injects his own political views while accusing others of doing the same. Under the term gender Walsh claims that it came about as a result of the word "sex" being viewed as specific to the sexual act. He gives the example "race and sex preferences" and then says that _he_ thinks "sexual preferences" when he hears this term. Funny, I never thought of that until I read his words! But that's not the most important point.

Walsh criticizes those who would "politicize" the word gender by making it refer to behavior. His example goes something like this: Johnny likes to wear dresses so he's of the female gender. The problem is that the word gender came from the fields of sociology and psychology long before it was in common use today. The very roots of this word are _specific_ to behavior. There are no politics about it. In 1990 when you said the word gender you were talking about behavior, no genitalia. Walsh, who apparently didn't speak with a sociologiy or psychology professor before writing this, makes it appear as if the original meaning is the new "political" definition while at the same time injecting his own current political view - one that rejects the the need for a term which recognizes varying degrees of gendered behavior among the sexes.

Despite these criticisms, I still recommend this book. It's interesting and educational. Just beware of the fact that this is a stylebook and, by definition, expresses the author's viewpoint.