Customer Reviews

I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar: A Collection of Egregious Errors, Disconcerting Bloopers, and Other Linguistic Slip-Ups

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

 

 

Sharon Eliza Nichols created a Facebook group dedicated to showing off signs demonstrating poor grammar, punctuation and spelling. So many hilarious examples were discovered that she decided to share them with the rest of the world. This book is chockfull of pictures of pictures of these signs, many of them laugh-out-loud funny. My favorite being the one that reads, "English is our language/no excetions/learn it". <Sigh>

I really enjoyed this book, as did my teenage children. If you want a good laugh, then pick up this book! You won't be disappointed.

"I judge you when you use poor grammar", by Sharon Eliza Nichols is a cute and clever picture book of embarrassing grammar errors. Bloopers, spelling errors, and apostrophe misuse are shown along with a comment highlighting the errors. It is divided into ten chapters; each groups the errors by usage categories, like Chap. 1, Food and Drink, which show signs, posters, messages, and menus from eating establishments. Chapter 6, Edumacation, has pictures of school marquees and a priceless one of the Village of Crestwood.

If English is your second language, then some of these mistakes can be explained. However, newspapers, city traffic signs, professional educators and the Department of Homeland Security? One of my favorites is the last one. It is a picture of a man in a protest demonstration. He holds two hand-printed signs. One says "GO USA", the other says "Get A BRAIN! MORANS". Enough said.

This book is a series of photos containing errors and poor word choices. The first few photos may be entertaining, but the errors are so repetitive that they eventually become only annoying. Imagine an e-mail forward with way too many attachments and you'll have a good idea of what to expect.

When mistakes due to spelling, wording, or placement create an amusing or bizarre effect, you get a book like Fail Nation or Caution: Funny Signs Ahead. When mistakes are simply incorrect, you get this book.

I am a Grammar Nazi, so I sympathize with the frustration of poor English use growing increasingly abundant in today's society. However, this book makes me feel bad for being a Grammar Nazi. When flipping through this book, I get the impression of a disgruntled, condescending teacher publishing students' homework mistakes, which makes me feel stupid via proxy. None of the images in this collection are funny or even particularly noteworthy (PROTIP: a picture should be able to stand on its own merits, and a caption should only add icing to the cake). When the pictures of hilarious gaffes were handed out, Nichols must have showed up late and had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Is it really worth paying for a compilation of misplaced apostrophes and other uninteresting typos?

Belittling others purely for being wrong does not a funny book make. I would feel amused if a mistake I made was funny and was included in one of these books, but none of these could be considered amusing in the slightest. If the idea was to teach by example a la Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the cavalier attitude is completely unnecessary. Making fun of others is best done with a light-hearted--not ham-fisted--touch, in a way that doesn't make the editor look like a mean-spirited, holier-than-thou literary bully. However, the selection is such that I'm not sure even an attitude adjustment would be much of an improvement.

Overall, I don't think it was worth even flipping through in the bookstore, much less buying. If feeling superior to others is your cup of tea, however, this book may be for you!

Excellent book! The sloppy use of grammar is a sore spot for me. It has been for many years now. Come on Americans - it's your NATIVE TONGUE!

This book is a humorous look at some very public bloopers and makes a great gift for the grammar lover in your life. I quite enjoyed it.

There are some great funny books like this out there. But this is just not one of them. 50% of the errors are misplaced apostrophes which gets really old. I bought it as a joke for a friend thinking he would get a kick out of it but it is just not that great of a read.

There are plenty of signs, labels, t-shirts, etc. that are funny because of incorrect grammar, punctutation or incorrect usage of words. This books seems to focus primarily on signs where the apostrophe is misused and when "your", "you're", "its", "it's", "there", "their", and "they're" are interchanged. After a while, it becomes rather boring. I find much funnier examples at engrish.com.

A compendium of chain-email-like grammar snafus worth a giggle and a space on your coffee table. Makes an excellent gift for co-workers and friends who know and appreciate the difference between their, there and they're.

My only critique would be that sometimes the same jokes (especially incorrect usage of apostrophes) are presented several times.

Has anyone pointed out in this book that so smugly wags its photographic fingers at the mistakes of others that the author herself has on page xi made a gaffe of her own? Her ACKNOWLEGMENTS page, that is?! Yep, acknowLEGments. Not acknowLEDGments. Perhaps she could, say, GIV HURSELF AN HONOROUS MENSHUN?? in any follow up tomes.