In “Is Your English Up to Scratch,” his omnibus review of six English-usage books both new and previously published,
PhillyNews.com staff writer Howard Shapiro talks with fascination about his discovery of the reasons and logic of the idiosyncrasies of the ever-changing tongue that’s the English language. The titles he reviewed were the following:
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Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O’Conner (new 3rd Edition)
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Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation by Janis Bell
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I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech by Ralph Keyes
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From the Horse’s Mouth: Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms, edited by John Ayto
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The Insect That Stole Butter?: Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, edited by Julia Cresswell
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What Made the Crocodile Cry?: 101 Questions About the English Language by Susie Dent
After reading all six books, Shapiro marvels at the fact that there’s often an explanation to the many perplexing stuff one finds in the language. He rhapsodizes: “English, that greatest and most flamboyant of thieves, often leaves clear tracks in its pilferage, and they swirl in mazes of strange idea associations and pronunciation shifts back through the centuries and directly to the tongues of the original owners. (Tongue is an example: from the French
langue. Before that, the Latin
lingua. Before that from
dinghu of Indo-European languages.
Dinghu? Don't ask. We'll never get to the books.)”
Particularly impressed by the new third edition of O’Conner’s
Woe Is I, the author of whom he unabashedly describes as “extraordinary” and “among American English’s smartest grammarians,” Shapiro says he emerged from his readings with the realization “that common sense has everything to do with the way we use English, no matter how the language is supposed to work.”
Read Howard Shapiro’s “Is Your English Up to Scratch” in PhillyNews.com now!
