Customer Reviews

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducible Quizzes

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I have been an English professor for fifteen years, and my advice is that people interested in improving their grammar find a better book than this one. It is full of errors. I care very much about getting students to write and speak properly (for many it's a key to success), and that's why I am so disappointed in this book. (By the way, I have not written any book that competes with this one for your dollars.) Better material is available free of charge on the internet.

I will list some errors below, all found in the very first section of the book, and you will note that in all the canned testimonials that appear on this site, not one of my statements will be refuted. Instead, you will hear about how this book "answered all of my questions" or "helped me land my dream job" or "turned my company around," etc. Nonsense.

ERROR 1: On page 2 we are told, "A subject will come before a phrase beginning with 'of'." This is simply not a rule; subjects often follow "of". Consider this sentence: "Hoping to win the respect of her employer, Sandra learned to speak fluent English." The subject, Sandra, comes after a phrase beginning with "of" ("of her employer"), not before one. Someone who followed the rule in the book might falsely conclude that "respect" is the subject, as it comes before "of".

ERROR 2: There are grammar and punctuation errors in the writing itself. On page 1 we read, "Being able to identify the subject and verb correctly will also help you with commas and semicolons as you will see later." It is certainly odd that a sentence about proper punctuation should itself include a punctuation error; a mandatory comma has been omitted between "semicolons" and "as."

ERROR 3: On page 2 we are told, most unhelpfully, "To find the subject and verb, always find the verb first." (This is like a recipe that says, "To bake a cake and make frosting for it, first bake the cake," and leaves its instructions on cake-baking at that.) Once you find the verb, the book continues, "Then ask who or what performed the verb." This sloppy wording is almost bound to cause confusion. Consider this sentence: "In spite of the bad instructions, the error was found by the student." The verb is "was found," and the student did the finding. It would be natural to suppose, then, that the student "performed the verb" and thus is the subject. The subject, however, is "the error," not "the student".

All of these problems (and others I have not mentioned) are found on the first two pages of the book.

Please note that no one promoting this book will defend the idea that subjects must precede phrases beginning with "of," or that finding "who performed the verb" gives students enough to go on to determine the subject, or that the author makes no punctuation errors of her own in the book. They as good as admit that some of the rules in the book are wrong, that the explanations are inadequate, and that the author makes punctuation errors. So one wonders what might motivate these people to endorse the book. As for my motive, it is this: concern for students who will be (and have been) misled by this faulty product.

The previous edition used crucial terms that it did not bother to define--like "direct object," "object of the preposition," and even "preposition" itself.

Imagine a grammar book that leaves students in the dark about the meaning of the word "preposition," and you have some idea of what this book is like.

As for crucial grammatical elements like transitive verbs, the subjunctive, linking verbs, helping verbs--they were not even mentioned. Will anyone step forward and say, "In this edition, 'preposition' is defined and transitive verbs are discussed"? Of course not.

This book omits even very basic material, and, what is worse, much of what it does say is misleadingly phrased or just plain wrong. You can do better.

I was going to use this book to plan lessons for my ESL class, but it's bad to almost a weird extent. For example, everyone else in the world talks about "subordinate clauses" and "independent clauses." This strange book uses the terms "weak clauses" and "strong clauses" instead. If your students are going to have to take standardized tests, stay away from this book! No test will ask them what a "weak clause" is--there is no such thing! Why not use the terms students will be asked about, or the terms used in other books they will study?

Then there are things that are even odder: made up rules that are not true. The book says, for example, "do not use a comma when the sentence starts with a strong clause followed by a weak clause." So, according to the book, the following is correct: "I was persuaded by my friends to buy the book although my teacher said it was bad." But that's absolutely wrong. There has to be a comma between "book" and "although". ("Although" begins a subordinate clause--or "weak clause" in the private lingo of this book.) I couldn't believe my eyes! Then I see that the author of the book actually obeys this non-rule and leaves commas out all over the place in the lessons.

So I went to the author's website (where all the rules in the book are available for free, anyway, so why buy it?) and found the following comments in the author's "Grammar Blog" for 2/12/08: "Thanks to Shawna L. for pointing out that the third example in my last newsletter had an error," and "Thanks to Kathy D. for pointing my sloppy grammar." What kind of grammar teacher needs students to point out his or her own grammatical errors? At least my visit to the site cleared up the mystery of this book. The author just doesn't know too much about grammar.

I bought this hoping for a grammar reference that was as comprehensive as The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. I was very disappointed. It is 75 pages of rules (many erroneous based on the other reviews, which I wish I'd read prior to purchasing) followed by 78 pages of quizzes and answers. There is no index. The lack of an index makes it particularly ineffective as a reference.

I found this book searching a grammar rule in Google and entered to the author's site (a very good site). This book is really useful, has many grammar rules and punctuations. At the end of the book, it has a series of quizzes of each chapter and its answers. I really appreciate to have found this book!!!!!!!!

A couple of weeks ago I was reading a book of short stories while waiting for car repairs. The book was written by a successful, respected author and the stories were quite enjoyable. However, there were so many grammatical errors that it eventually became distracting. Yes, I took out my pencil and started correcting the errors. (my favorite was the mention of someone who had elaborately QUAFFED hair!) How was it, I wondered, that neither the famous writer nor her editor had a grammar book handy when they were getting the book ready for publication?

THIS is the book they could have used. No, it is not a textbook, and it won't teach you everything there is to know about the English language. But it's good for a quick reference, the list of homophones is extensive and very useful, and it will make you a better writer. The book covers topics from the very basic ("a" vs. "an") to more advanced writing skills (hyphens, en dashes and em dashes,)to very subtle differences which are common sources of errors ("that" vs. "which"). If you read it all the way through, you won't remember everything, but you WILL learn things. I consider myself a good writer, but I learned quite a few things from this book.

I have two children, one in middle school and one in high school, and both enjoyed taking the quizzes in the back of the book. Call us a whole family of grammar nerds, but we thought it was fun!

Yes, there are some mistakes in this book, and I would suggest a more thorough editing for the eleventh edition. I'm not terribly busy, by the way, if they're looking for volunteers.

My ex-husband bought this book for our son without checking the reviews. One day, I needed to look something up and I borrowed it from my son's room. Boy, was I astonished! That's why I had to check what other people thought about it. The book is not only full of mistakes, but contains also many inaccuracies as well as false, made-up rules. Someone who knowingly leads young (and not-so-young) people's minds in the wrong direction should get jail time. It is just plain wrong to do that to kids.

It is already hard enough to teach them something, but when you plant something in their minds, it is also very hard to go back and remove (or correct) it. So, for a book that calls itself the "blue book" of grammar, it is completely inadmissible to erect such grammatical fallacies as truths, and spoil the mind of young adults. This author knows nothing about grammar, and the book should be recalled. Everyone who bought it should get a refund of their money.

Other reviewers have given examples, so I don't need to repeat that process. I just want to observe that is a book written by a "life coach" (one of those pseudo-professions, like being a feng shui "expert", a "psychic" or an aroma "therapist") and a blogger (like, well, almost everyone over the age of 12 these days). She is not a best-selling author, a professional editor, an English language professor, or any other sort of well-qualified person to write a book on English grammar. Anyone can write a book about anything, and (with luck, contact-networking and perseverance) get it published, but that doesn't mean it will be worth reading. On a technical topic like linguistics, failure to have both an applicable edu-professional background and the experience in the field to be authoritative is generally a shortcut to disaster. I'm not even a Fowlerian traditionalist when it comes to grammar - I applaud efforts by the Chicago editors, Burchfield (Oxford), and others to be more descriptive and modern, and less prescriptive and stodgy, in updated editions of their popular style guides - but some of what Straus advises is simply nonsense. This book and the associated website betray a deep-seated absorption of lazy habits (e.g., pretending that commas don't serve a purpose) from high-speed, low-thought writing on the Internet and in text messaging. While online communication has, for around two years of actual public impact, has an influence on modern grammar, it is a rash mistake to import expedient practices from the register of informal e-chat into planned writing. This even applies to blogging; writing an essay is still writing an essay, regardless of whether your fingers are pushing electrons through circuits or ink onto paper.

the book doe snot help for some one want to study English in order to pursue his/her further education it is just ordinary book for primary school .all examples are short and doe snot help .

As an SAT and ACT test prep tutor, I am always on the lookout for great online resources for my students. I used to send them to the Blue Book of Grammar website which USED TO BE a wonderful interactive resource for students. I liked it so much, I even purchased the book. Alas, success has been good to the author but terrible to the grammar-starved public! Her website is a mass of jiggly, flashing, popping ads and is truly impossible to navigate without being accosted by numerous hard-sell ads for her product, obscuring the actual grammar lessons! If one finally finds the meager grammar drills without suffering an epileptic seizure from all the flashing and bouncing ads, it's a near-miracle. I have taken this formerly useful website off my list of top resources for test prep students.

As for the book, it's ok, but poorly organized. It's basically a collection of the web quizzes with small lessons, a webpage'a-worth for each point. Find a better website, is my advice. Try "Big Dog Grammar Drills" or the homely but well-thought out lessons at [...].

Karen Berlin Ishii, NYC

I recently picked up the BBOG and want to sing its praises! Ms. Straus's compilation is easy to read, technically precise, and packed with useful examples. It's an invaluable reference for practical writing and a great learning tool for mastering those pesky counter-intuitive nuances that separate decent writing from masterful scholarship. I write for a living and soon after buying this book, I condensed my half-a-dozen writers' reference books into one source, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. I won't say "This book has changed my life"; it's a grammar book. But it has done one thing - answered each and every one of my grammar- and punctuation-related questions. What more can you ask for than one-stop shopping for your everyday grammatical needs!