New Book Makes Grammar and Language Accessible

“Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles, skeevy marketers, D-list celebrity half-wits, and pathetic attention seekers,” writes Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons. Twitter has “set back the English language 100 years,” says one sports radio talk show host, who “ridiculed the self-indulgent sharing of the humdrum details of daily life enabled by Twitter.”

While I agree with the preceding writer and speaker, quoted in Roy Peter Clark’s new book, The Glamour of Grammar, I also agree with the author’s view that “rather than hate such forms of online communication or imagine that they set back the language, why not explore the potential of such new forms of expression and communication, aided and abetted by new technologies? After all, writing was once a new technology, as was the printing press?” Clark’s opinion is a more realistic and productive one than the simple condemnations, even though they have validity, of the statements in my first paragraph. Clark’s conclusion in the last of his book’s fifty short chapters is that if you “master the grammar of these new forms of writing – the blog post, an e-mail message, a text message, or a Tweet,” by following several strategies, “these new forms need not be word dumps,” but can provide “powerful information, persuasive argument, even a literary moment.”

Roy Peter Clark’s book is one of the most readable and useful sources of English grammar and writing I have ever encountered. It is divided into five parts, each with approximately ten chapters.  “Words” deals with definitions and types of dictionaries. “Points” deals with punctuation. “Standards” deals with common grammatical errors to avoid. “Meaning” deals mainly with writing good sentences. “Purpose” covers a variety of topics, including nonstandard English, dialect, taboo language, denotation and connotation, concrete and abstract language.

The Glamour of Grammar is not a book for everyone, but it is a book for anyone who needs or wants to write and speak clearly, correctly, and effectively. It fulfills the author’s purpose to show not only that learning how to use language can be interesting and enjoyable, but also that freedom of expression (part of the foundation of democracy) depends on the means to express yourself effectively.