Customer Reviews

Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the unique book that has you mentally tallying up your friend's birthdays before you get to the last chapter (lets see... I can buy it for Ken, and Susie, and my daughter so she won't dog-ear my copy...). I picked this up for an educationally boring read that would knock me out at bedtime and instead found myself staying up most of the night laughing. Comma Sense is the darndest, funniest, wittiest educational book I've ever read. You can't help but learn something... it sort of seeps into your brain while you're distracted with a mental picture of what the Andrew Sisters would look like if viewed from above (yes, of COURSE they would look like...well, read Chapter 13 and you'll find out). I would write more, but I have to rush out now and buy extra copies for everyone I know.

For me, personally, this was the right book at the right time.

I was searching for a source that would support or contrast the recent (British) publication entitled: EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES which, while an excellent and useful guide, left me confounded regarding its appropriateness for American English. This matter was settled promptly by the authors of the subject.

My recent re-interest in writing improvement and excellence, aside from standard business letters, has been spurned by an increased usage of email.

I am familiar with Richard Lederer's work and use of humor, and this lived up to and exceeded my expectations: All issues pertaining to punctuation are addressed; and all conceivable questions answered.

Additionally, the handy "review" section following the last chapter makes this an invaluable, easy-to-use, portable guide.

This is far more than recommendable: it's necessary!

Not just another book on punctuation! What can Comma Sense: A Fundamental Guide To Punctuation hold over its many competitors? 'Fun' is the operative word here, as Richard Lederer and John Shore poke fun at the misuse of punctuation and how choices in punctuation can have very different results. Plenty of examples come couched in this humor, which makes Comma Sense quite easy to learn. Just consider that here the exclamation point is the 'titan of tingle, the prince of palpitation' and you have some idea of the allure of Comma Sense - and its potential of educating those who traditionally wouldn't touch grammar books with a ten-foot pole.

Probably the most entertaining book on proper punctuation ever written. It should be in the hands of every student from third grade through college, as well as anyone who ever has to write a business letter or resume. The rules are very simple and made both funny and understandable. You will probably never find a book on language that is so much fun reading. And reading it will almost certainly improve your letter and paper writing. A wonderful Christmas present for a teen-ager.

The book seems a natural for series of educational shorts for use in schools, enabling Toastmaster "Golden Gaval" winner Lederer to do what he likes to best: Educate children in good English.

Short but one of the best books Mr. Lederer has written.

I love this book and refer to it often. The book's format makes it very easy to find what you are looking for, with lots of examples to show how a certain punctuation is used.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to brush up on their rusty knowledge.

Written by a couple of English majors, for the fun of it, I just have to wonder why this little book would cost so much. They poke fun at punctuation, as we know it in America, which I am sure will thoroughly confuse those who speak other languages to wonder what on earth is going on! But, that's the fun of it!

This is all about writing, and writing is about expressing thoughts and feelings (also opinions). This instruction booklet will show you which punctuation mark to use to get your point across, and to be understood to your best potential. I was best at grammar in high school, went on to literature in college where I married my lit. (and speech) teacher [one and the same.] I thought I knew it all, as other college English teachers told me they had never heard me make a grammatical error. But, as with all the books I choose, I learned about the "ellipsis" which I have never used and reminded me of the brackets, which I am not sure I learned in the first place.

John Shore is the editor who loves to mark. I once typed into the computer a "Self Study" for a vocational school, and the English teacher on the committee told me she got out her red marker to circle all the errors, but in the sections I put together, she could find none to circle. That was the greatest compliment! Richard Lederer is the language expert, having written a humungous amount of books on English in all its forms: puns, words, games, verbal skills, and miracles of....

If you know English already, they will teach you when and how to use the apostrophe, colon, semicolon, comma, dash, exclamation point, hyphen, paragraph, parentheses, question mark, quotation mark, and the new ones, brackets and ellipsis. For instance, "within a quotation, use brackets to insert a missing or explanatory word or comment." "***Use an ellipsis to indicate the intentional omission of one or more words within a sentence." This might be confusing to non-English speakers, as both involved missing words. Where'd they go? Do the words exist and just have gotten lost, or did the writer intend not to use those words anyway?

They give a funny use of the hyphen, how the wrong placement at the end of a line can make completely different words. The best way to avoid that is to justify your typewritten work. It makes the margins level and nothing is hyphenated. From one English perfectionist to another, I wish the self-appointed grammar expert in the local newspaper could see this delightful book. He could learn a thing or two, maybe several, as he thinks differently from the way I was taught. By the way, he avoids me in public!

Comma Sense is the best grammar book I have ever seen. It is not like the grammar books we remember from childhood, full of rules upon rules and dry as sawdust. It has the rules, but it teaches them in a funny and entertaining way. This is a grammar book I will be glad to read, and that will most likely teach me things I need to know. If more grammar books were like this one, Americans as a rule would have much more Comma Sense.

Every English teacher, writer, and student needs this fun punctuation guide. Lederer and Shore take a mundane topic and make it interesting -- nay, fascinating! -- for everyone. Even if you don't care about the mechanics of proper writing, you will still enjoy this book.

I have not finished reading the book, but from what I have read of it, it is well written and meets a great need.

I was hoping for more than this book offered. Maybe I misread the description, but I was really hoping for more. Good for elementary school level learners.