Customer Reviews

The Elephants of Style : A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English

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I found myself laughing out loud as I read Bill Walsh's "The Elephant's of Style."

Reminiscent of "Woe is I" this title actually entertains as it enlightens. Some of Walsh's best lines were "Split infinitives are the chicken cacciatore of the English Language" and "Who died and left me in charge of the English language?"

I want to know where Bill Walsh was when I was being drilled in grammar back in school! First they started teaching kids phonics and blends using fun songs and hand motions and now this?! I missed out on all the fun!

I especially enjoyed the section entitled "The Lies Your English Teacher Told You: Big Myths of English Usage" (I actually wiped my brow at one point in that chapter.) His appendix, "The Curmudgeon's Stylebook" is a valuable addition as well.

Wonderful stuff, easy to remember and apply.... Excellent for those who got stuck in the "grammar rules" and "strict critiques" from the past.... Free up the negative through process and just get through to the mechanics in this user friendly guide. The index will take you straight to your area of interest and then read the rest just `cause its so darn fun...... oh, I wonder if it's against the rules to insert periods in a row like that?

Better refer to my copy of "Elephants of Style" now.....

Almost nothing is as boring as learning the rules of grammar.
The Elephants of Style, however, makes the subject humorous and easier to both read and learn about. The author uses great(and often funny ) examples to teach students about everything from parts of speech to plagarism. I would recommend this book to college freshman, English teachers, or anyone struggling with grammar.
Of course, grammar may never lose the title of "boringest of them all," but at least there is a little humor at the end of the tunnel.

I thought this might be similar to Patricia O'Conner's wonder Woe Is I which I use with my college writing students. But it is not. It is really more like an easier-to-approach Chicago Manual of Style. In other words for those who get easily intimidated by the Chicago style manual, this is much more "user friendly." And, like Dr. O'Conner, the author does not fall into the traps of absolutely ridiculous rules that are perpetuated by so many writing teachers and so many textbooks. For example, he takes to task those who say one can never begin a sentence with "and" or "but." And all those other ridiculous rules that no good writer adheres to. It is a great book. Highly recommended.

Although I don't agree one hundred percent with Mr Walsh--and I am sure he would be glad to know that I don't--his book deserves top marking for its thoroughness. The book is full of witticisms that make it a good read and almost convince us that Bill Walsh is always right, even though his arguments are always very well fundamented. But as for me, I will continue saying that I have "a healthy diet" instead of "a healthful one", and pronouncing "short-lived" with a short "i" instead of a long one.

For those of us who have trouble blindly accepting short declarative rules about grammar and style; here's a guy who doesn't just relate HIS positions on the subject, he explains WHY he holds those positions. Within this framework you will learn that many of the grammar-rules, which are often presented as hard facts by others, are actually quite squishy.

This author is not so arrogant as to think he can simply relate his opinions as a list of facts. Instead, he feels the need to justify his opinions. In explaining his justification for a given style-rule, he enlightens us, and gives us the understanding we need to draw our own conclusions. Those conclusions almost always agree with his, but with the added understanding comes the confidence to break rules we normally agree with, if that's what the situation calls for...

..."Or" should I say: "if it is that for which the situation calls" :-)

Elephants of Style, the play on the title of Strunk and White's famous book aside, is an essential for any writer as well as any one who cares about where the English language is headed.

One really can't go wrong with a book from Bill Walsh. I wish I could say at least one thing negatively about this book, but I can't.

If you haven't purchased this book do so soon. There was so much I learned here and even now I'm not following one rule that Walsh suggests, but I am a creature of habit and old habits, as they say, die hard. There I did it. Now, purchase Bill Walsh's book and see what I'm talking about.

See also Walsh's Lapsing Into a Comma : A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them. You will be glad you did.

Visiting the front lines of the grammar and usage wars with Bill Walsh is a pleasure for writers and readers alike. Like his previous work, Lapsing Into a Comma, this entertaining and enlightening book shows Walsh has got a great ear and a great sense of humor.

I like this book! I find it more useful that the classical Elements of Style by Strunk & White in that it lists a great many words that tend to be misused in modern times and explains more clearly the use of commas.

The advice in this book is outstanding for news reporting but cannot be used for preparing an article for publication in a scientific journal because, at least for this one reason, of the advice on acceptable usages of "data" as a singular noun (it's not. No exceptions) and I didn't notice any advice to string together a convoluted maximum entanglement of words in a rambling sentence of forbidding length for the purpose of saving space.

The author includes some pertinent differences in usages described other newspapers' style guides so that the reader can judge what's best for his or her intended forum.

By Bill Marsano. What a jolly season for word-lovers this is, what with Lynn Truss's "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" and this book by Bill Walsh coming along neck-and-neck and cheek-by-jowl. Walsh, who is the copy chief of the Washington Post, has written a far broader work than Truss's, with punctuation just one of the things covered (and usually very well covered). There's also grammar here and more important there is style.

The author of such a book sets himself up, always. Many readers will assume or claim that he's preaching perfection and will therefore fall upon tiny errors yelling nyah-nyah in spiteful disvalidation of his whole work, of his very right to speak at all. Sorry but, admirable as it may be, prefection eludes and always will (Lynn Truss's first error is in her subtitle!). Mark Twain said, of perfection in English grammar, "the thing just can't be done." So let's be willing to give a little, and even accept the odd contradiction.

That done, we find a pretty useful guide. It's mostly newspaper-oriented, but it's still a help to the ordinary writer and ordinary person struggling to commit a sentence and finding between the opening capital and the closing period a morass of weird plurals, nightmare collectives, number-of-the-verb, stylistic conventions, punctuational deadfalls and a lot of other horrors that make not ending with a preposition a treat (which taboo is, by the way, nonsense, as Walsh neatly explains). Walsh deals with most problems briskly and helpfully, and if you keep this book ever close to your heart it won't be long before you can toss off elegant vanity plates, bumperstickers and ransom notes without so much as a by-your-leave. And you will begin to enjoy doing so, because you won't be scared out of your wits half the time. (Most people dread writing as they dread public speaking.)

I am generally dubious of copy editors; I consider them a species of vermin that should be hunted for sport. But I will go a long way with Walsh because he clearly thinks about the language and tries to make intelligent, workable decisions that help reader and writer alike. (Most copy editors simply trot out their pet peeves and hobby-horses, salt with ignorance and prejudice, and then damage the writer's copy, the hideous effects invisible until the crime appears in print.)

I will unyieldingly dispute with him on two points, however. First, (free-lance) writers should absolutely not waste any time studying client magazines to learn their style. Magazines routinely pay writers poorly and abuse them in general; if they want their stylebooks followed, let the editors do some work for a change. (Editors don't have jobs. They have lunch.) Second, what's this foolishness about a ship being referred to as "it"?

That's an example of what offends me most about copy editors: their char-woman's mentality. Always trying to neaten up; emptying the ashtray every time the ash hits the glass; making you move so they can plump up the pillows. Busy, busy, busy! The net result of all this is damage to a language of which varioty is its chiefest glory. Referring to ships as feminine is a tradition many centuries old: it goes back to the Romans; it is established and understood; it is not to be dismissed by some petty tyrant with an itchy pencil. Maybe it's a question of political correctness. Maybe someone is pained because it excludes an entire sex (the male, I believe). Frankly I'm disinclined to believe that this will cause little boys everywhere to be discouranged from becoming ocean liners, but copy editors might very well fall for that.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor.

Walsh's book dispels writing myths and lists common writing errors for today's authors and journalists. There is only one red flag I would have liked to see him raise: the use of the word "got" as in "I've got to stop by the store" or You've got some coffee spilled on your shirt." As far as I am concerned, "got" could be completely removed from the dictionary without being missed. Even "proper" uses of the word like "I got a shirt at the store" would sound better as "I bought a shirt at the store."
Still, I learned so much from Walsh's elephants, and plan to refer to his book often!