Customer Reviews

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If people weren't routinely excoriated, sniped at, or prissily corrected because of slip-ups in grammar, there wouldn't be a need for a book like this. June Casagrande is to be commended for coming up with a fresh approach and finding a multitude of ways to be humorous about language rules. She aimed the book toward the masses of people who are intimidated by language geeks.

I don't think she ever intended the book to be viewed as the 'gold standard' on the subject, and she often quotes from the accepted authorities, so that people who want to learn even more about the subject know where they can look.

There definitely are better guidebooks on the topic. This book is not organized in a way that makes it easy to flip through, to find quick answers to common questions. But it has merit as a casual approach to an admittedly stiff subject. You could call it "grammar for people who don't suck all the air out of a room." What a novel idea.

I really wanted to like this book. The premise is certainly true: grammar snobs often are bullies and often are faking it, so ammunition to fight them is a good thing to have.

The only good strategy for fighting the grammar snobs is to know more than they do. Unfortunately, June Casagrande is not equipped for this. The book is rife with errors. These can be as basic as problems identifying parts of speech. Her discussion of the infinitive is completely botched, her discussion of the subjunctive comes across as an explanation by someone who barely understands the subject, and so on.

There are problems with even understanding what the issues are. Casagrande makes no distinction between questions of grammar and questions of style. Style manuals exist to bring consistency to a publication's look. It is completely arbitrary whether we write "the 1980s" or "the 1980's" but a publication looks better if it picks one and sticks with it. But this doesn't imply that one version is right and another wrong in any general sense. So if someone criticizes your choice, the correct response is not that even the "experts" disagree. It is that there are various legitimate styles to choose from.

On questions that really are of grammar, and not merely style, Casagrande completely abandons the good fight. There are innumerable issues where the grammar snobs make questionable assertions. For example, the claim that "which" cannot be used as the relative pronoun in a restrictive clause. This rule was a flat-out invention that got adopted in American style manuals, gradually infiltrating its way into the collective consciousness as a rule of grammar. This is complete nonsense. No one can declare a change to the English language by fiat, and anyone who says that a restrictive "which" is bad grammar should be mocked mercilessly. This ought to be just the book for the job, but Casagrande doesn't seem to realize that there is an issue. Instead, we get a routine explanation of the rule such as can be found in any number of books. This happens over and over: questionable rules that ought to be challenged are meekly accepted.

There is a recurring bit of shtick about how unqualified she is to write a book on grammar. This presumably is intended as self-deprecating humor. Unfortunately, it is an accurate description of the situation.

I'm not an English major or teacher, but an engineer who occasionally writes technical and marketing literature. Although I've always had a keen grasp of tricky English rules and exceptions, at times I still fumble with such details as "which" vs. "that" and "three" vs. "3". I thought this book was hilarious and a fun way to learn the tricky rules. I usually have a very short attention span when reading any type of rule book. However, June's short and humorous chapters made this book easy to read. Besides the definite grammar rules, the best thing I got from this book is learning that, in many cases, there are no definite rules. The major sources of English reference disagree with each other, and the rules change over time. This quickly put my mind at ease as I often thought I was going crazy when reading different writing styles. I highly recommend this book for anyone who does any kind of writing for a living.

Frankly, I think the entire point of this book is to relax about grammar. For those who find it useless, I question whether they read through the whole book or understood that Cassagrande's point is that grammar is a messed-up area in which none of the style guides will ever agree. Her point isn't to show you how it's done so much as to allow people to feel a bit more confident.

I found the book insightful, helpful and a very good source of entertainment. If you take it too seriously, then you'll never get the point of it, which is to understand that grammar will always baffle even the smartest among us, and that it's okay that it is. Cassagrande points out a few areas where the style guides and self-proclaimed language experts can't even agree and shows that grammar is more complex given each interpretation. That we don't agree only proves that point.

I made a startling discovery in the opening pages of "Grammar Snobs are Big Meanies" by June Casagrande. There are actually newspapers that publish grammar columns? The thought of this fascinated me - and I wondered if all of the grammar columns were cranky or if they were actually helpful in a positive sort of way. I continued reading and was delighter at what I found.

I was thrilled to see the title of this book for multiple reasons. The first and foremost is this: as a writing teacher and as a writer, there are occasions when I get lambasted for grammatical mistakes and the folks who deliver the criticism confound me with their arrogance and smug grandiosity.

I thought it might be just me. Finding June Casagrande's book was like finding a dear friend. The book outlines frequent complaints of Grammar snobs and clarifies the truth (or lack of truth) in those complaints. This is especially useful because instead of just proclaiming grammar rules like some grammar books, this book gives you a context.

The examples are frequently amusing, always entertaining and they include illustrations from pop culture (read about "The Simpsons" and "Star Trek") and there was even a review of my eleventh grade English class, making clear the uses of "lay" and "lie".

Grammar reference books are essential for a writer's home liberary and one like this will not only teach, it gives the juice that helps those teachings to stick. Put this on your shelf along with others like "Elements of Style" and "Woe is I".

There is plenty of room for a variety of approaches. Many kudos to June Casagrande for delivering such a unique example.

I have a few grammar books that I turn to in times of need when editing my magazine. I've added this book because I was looking for something that was a bit more conversational and explanatory, rather than a list of rules. This is by no means a "complete" book, but more a collection of chapters that deal with common contentions in grammar. Casagrande repeatedly tells the reader to trust his/her ear and that many of the rules that are constantly foisted on us are wrong, misunderstood or have exceptions that the sticklers or "snobs" don't know. I found a couple of chapters still confusing, but others were enlightening. Also, the snob angle got a little tired, but her humor was appreciated. She does include a good list of references that I'll check out to fill out my "reference" section. I'm not trying to be an exemplary grammarian, just someone who can write clearly, concisely and compellingly. I think Casagrande's book will help me on my journey, even if it isn't the total answer.

I think June Casagrande had a run-in with someone like my former boss, who treated language as though it were a logic puzzle governed by rigid laws, rather than a vibrant tool to be used with the aid of a few helpful grammar rules and style points. The woman had a tin ear for good prose and constantly insisted on challenging people based on rules that were either hopelessly arcane or flat-out wrong. And if you cornered her, her usual squirm-out was that her way was "idiomatic" or the "generally accepted" way. She was a grammar snob, and she was a great big meanie.

This is the portrait that June Casagrande tries to paint, but ultimately, she doesn't really seem to be sure what a grammar snob is. Is it a person who will run out of the room crying when you press him or her on a technicality, because the snob really doesn't know what he or she is talking about? Or is it a person who simply makes you feel low because of the snob's superior grasp of the language? Well, Casagrande seems to want it both ways. Sometimes the meanies are overbearing know-it-alls, and sometimes they're overbearing know-nothings. Strangely, she ultimately reverts to the alleged meanies, especially Bryan Garner, to back up her arguments, which range from the obvious (the stuff you learned in high school English, if you paid the least bit of attention) to the downright weak to things that aren't even matters of grammar at all. Ultimately, she ends up saying that you need to know what the grammar snobs know.

Yet while she does that, she blindly defends some meanie rules (with often flimsy explanations that rely a lot on the use of the word "technically") and tosses out others. Incidentally, an earlier reviewer dinged her for defending against the use of the restrictive "which," yet that's one of the calls I'll give her credit for. The restrictive "which" may not be bad grammar, per se, but it is most certainly bad form, given that an indiscriminate use of "which" can only lead to confusion for readers.

Casagrande also tells you that snobs will insist that you never split an infinitive but love to resort to Churchill's famous quote to tell you why you CAN end a sentence with a preposition. Now, I would think that these bogeymen snobs would tell you to do neither, given that the infinitive rule and the preposition rule both derive from ill-advised attempts to impose the limitations of Latin grammar on our language. So which is it? Do grammar snobs embrace silly rules rooted in Latin, or don't they? Again, the author either wants it both ways or is just clueless.

It's not a big surprise that this book is so confused in its advice. You're dealing with someone who uses "prior to," gives a blanket defense of politically correct language (in quite a snobbish way, I might add), and, perhaps worst of all, offers up a dangler as a fix for a dangler. (See page 26 -- the opening phrase modifies "vision," not "VP" as she had intended.) The website associated with this book is just as bad. On a quick glance, I spotted at least three glaring punctuation errors and a completely illiterate (though all too common) use of "due to." (Helpful hint: "Due to" is properly used as an adjective phrase and almost always follows a form of the verb "to be." Think of it as a synonym for "attributable to" or "caused by." It answers what, not why. Most of the time, you really want to say "because of.")

In short, Casagrande doesn't know what she's talking about. She can't even discern grammar from style, it seems. She obviously knows just enough to make a living as a word person, but let me tell you -- I work as a copy editor, too, and I've seen some June Casagrandes in my profession. They remember the stuff in their AP stylebooks and have a slightly above-average grasp of basic grammar rules, but at the end of the day, someone else has to clean things up where their deficiencies left off. And remember, I'm saying this as someone who once suffered under a REAL grammar snob.

The good news is that you CAN learn how to use the language right -- er, correctly -- without becoming a snob. Casagrande tries to make that point but fails miserably. She also seems to have a problem with what she perceives as the stuffy humorlessness among grammar folks, so she jacks up her book with oh-so-hip references to pop culture (mainly primetime cartoons) and peppers it all with a little bit of raunch. Yes, she's looking down on the snobs' stuffiness -- and that makes her a snob, too. The odd thing is, there's plenty of subtle humor among grammarians and their tomes -- and Casagrande even points to some of it. If you want funny, this book is fine. If you want funny AND competent, try Bill Walsh.

Casagrande says that no grammar snob would ever want you to know about someone like Garner and his usage guide. Well, I'm here to tell you that I have a copy of "Garner's Modern American Usage" on my desk. It's one of the best, most useful books I own. And this editor fully encourages you to get a copy, too, because everyone should be able to use the language properly. Just don't look to June Casagrande for help, no matter what you do.

I wanted to like this book, but unfortunately the author seems to have put more effort into trying to be entertaining than getting things right. Starting on page 4, an omitted closing quotation mark might have been a simple typographic error, but an insistence on page 23 that the word "up" in "The baby can sit up" is an adjective (no, it's an adverb - up modifies sit, not baby) made me throw up my hands in resignation and, I confess, stop reading. I find no pleasure in reading a book on grammar that not only makes mistakes but vehemently defends them.

Did the author write this book in response to accusations of being a grammar snob? If so, she has a lot more explaining to do.

I'm a freelance writer who has a shelf full of reference books, because ... sadly ... even though this is my profession I often get caught not quite knowing why something is right or wrong. It's a complicated language OK! Love, love, love, love this book. As entertaining as it is informative. I've highlighted and sticky-noted several pages. Chapter 35 actually happened to me too ... almost verbatim.

Grammar Snobs is an entertaining read, with grammar lessons wrapped in anecdotal humor. This is not a hardcore reference guide to grammar and should not be judged as such. It is what it is - a scenic route to grammar - a gratifying and amusing trip.

Those who are uptight and like to nitpick their way through the English language will probably have a hard time getting through this book... because it will force them to crack a smile and not take themselves so seriously.