The Rules of English + The Wrongs of English
This may not be a big book but it has a huge ambition – to teach English grammar to English speakers. That ambition is huge for two reasons: (1) hardly any of us knows anything about any of it and (2) in English, grammar is shockingly important because it secretly defines us all.
The second half of this book deals with the rules and conventions of written English and what is usually thought of as grammar – punctuation, usage and the various words and structures forbidden by traditional teaching. The first section is a guide to an entirely different subject – the real grammar of English, the actual rules that form the software of our language. Some of these rules have become life-definingly significant, with the occasionally weird forms of middle-class English acting as secret passwords – if you don’t use middle-class grammar, you don’t get into the middle-class.
This may not be a big book but it has a huge ambition – to teach English grammar to English speakers. That ambition is huge for two reasons: (1) hardly any of us knows anything about any of it and (2) in English, grammar is shockingly important because it secretly defines us all.
The second half of this book deals with the rules and conventions of written English and what is usually thought of as grammar – punctuation, usage and the various words and structures forbidden by traditional teaching. The first section is a guide to an entirely different subject – the real grammar of English, the actual rules that form the software of our language. Some of these rules have become life-definingly significant, with the occasionally weird forms of middle-class English acting as secret passwords – if you don’t use middle-class grammar, you don’t get into the middle-class.
This may not be a big book but it has a huge ambition – to teach English grammar to English speakers. That ambition is huge for two reasons: (1) hardly any of us knows anything about any of it and (2) in English, grammar is shockingly important because it secretly defines us all.
The second half of this book deals with the rules and conventions of written English and what is usually thought of as grammar – punctuation, usage and the various words and structures forbidden by traditional teaching. The first section is a guide to an entirely different subject – the real grammar of English, the actual rules that form the software of our language. Some of these rules have become life-definingly significant, with the occasionally weird forms of middle-class English acting as secret passwords – if you don’t use middle-class grammar, you don’t get into the middle-class.