Customer Reviews

Word Court: Wherein verbal virtue is rewarded, crimes against the language are punished, and poetic justice is done

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seriously, though: this book is the best I've seen come along in recent years on the subject of English language and usage. It's also a lot of fun to read. As someone who cares deeply about "getting it down right," it's a great relief to know there are people out there whose job it is to pay attention to how our language is evolving (or not), especially in this age of computerese and political correctness. Wallraff manages to impart a wealth of useful information with a light, witty touch. She seems to answer almost every frustrating question I've ever had about English. Word Court is essential if your craft is writing, or even if you merely enjoy thinking about language. The book has earned a spot on my shelf, right next to the old classics like Fowler and Strunk & White. I highly recommend it.

I have been an ardent afficiando of the English language for many decades and have a large, though incomplete library of books on the subject. Based on its description, I had to order this one. It arrived and, to my surprise, I am reading it as I might any other book rather than using it only as a reference. It is helpful, full of great information and points-of-view. I cannot praise it enough. It is a major contribution to the subject and absolutely delightful, as well. Barbara Wallraff need not take a back seat to Fowler, on that account.

I'm an avid collector of language-reference books, and use them for both professional and personal purposes. This is one of the best I've found. It's fun to read (a rare characteristic in this genre) but is also terrifically informative. In addition to covering all sorts of routine questions about grammar and usage, it also offers advice on topics that nobody else seems to address. For example, where else can you find out whether temperatures may be "cold" or must be "low"? This is a book that's definitely worth having on one's desk -- and at one's bedside!

What an absolute joy this book was to read; like sitting down and having coffee alone with the author for a few hours and delighting in the stories of her life. I found her informal style as engaging as the stories she was telling, and have been seen in trains, airplanes, and my bed laughing out loud at her witty comments. She believes in our language but is always modern in her views. Never doctrinaire, but never lax in her respect for the rules that assure the best communication. Can't wait to read "More Word Court".

No, not another how-to-write and grammar book, but a terrific book about our language, how we use it, its peculiarities and ours. Her magazine readers (she writes a column for The Atlantic) have asked her lots of crazy questions, which she answers in thoughtful and amusing ways. You can read this for fun - or as a reference. Either way, it really works.

Barbara Wallwrath makes effective writing and speaking a joy. In my judgement her WORD COURT is the reference you will want to use for real expertise on grammar and language. Don't miss her ruling on the guy in the raincoat and the bit about question marks. It is hilarious as well as instructive. I won't spoil the joke here; see for yourself.

What could be more fun to a proofreader and freelance editor than reading an engaging, enjoyable, enlightening, entertaining, n-th degree perfect book on the proper use of our English language. It's a delightful education with many smiles.

This is the kind of grammar/usage book that one can sink his fangs into with pure appetite and eat until bloated. Personally I devoured the whole thing in a setting and a half. Judge Barbara, like TV's Judge Judy, can come down on the foolish and the guilty with the sort of gusto that makes one want to stand up and clap hands. For example on page 135 she lectures one of her misguided correspondents: "I have hundreds of years of tradition and literature behind me... And behind you are...children?" Alternatively, she can dismiss the pretentious or deluded with a smooth satirical word or two, as on page 53 where we find a correspondent unhappy with the meaning of the phrase "French bath." "The phrase...always meant to me covering body odor with perfume...[but] the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang reads, <An erotic act consisting of extensive licking of the partner's body.> [Paragraph break] I would like my version to become more accepted." Wallraff responds, "I didn't know what to say to that. Finally I wrote back: [Paragraph break] Bonne chance!"

Her Fowler-like humor aside, what's great about Judge Barbara is that while authoritative and incisive and usually right--or at least in agreement with my prejudices--she is sometimes woefully "wrong, Wrong, WRONG!" (to quote one of her letter writers). For example her idea that informal English, as distinguished from standard English, ought to be labeled "house English" since that is the way we speak around the house, is curiously amiss. (Better yet how about "house arrest" for the good Judge for such an uncouth "improvement"?) Or the fact that she doesn't "get" in her discussion of "I could care less" on pages 61-62 that the seemingly illogical phrase is in fact IRONIC. (Sorry for the loud caps, but Amazon.com's editor isn't capable of italics, which is a shame, particularly in the present instance.)

All of this keeps us interested. Wallraff is neither a pedant nor a permissive. She wants to "do what we can to ensure that...[the language] changes as slowly as possible" (p. 10). And she wants to do it with humor, as on page 102 where she notes that the sentence, "Time flies when you're having fun," could be a command! Wonderfully she does not explain this; but for those in a hurry here's a hint: use a stop watch. However she is NOT like the French word police who, due to their irrational fear of creeping "franglais," will go to great lengths to protect their language from neologisms and foreign intrusions. Wallraff, for example, does something her mentors, Fowler, Strunk and White, Bernstein, et al., never could do. She consults the Internet for instances of usage! On page 72 she reports about browsing Web sites to see how people are formulating the term, "Health Care," with or without a hyphen, one word or two?

Now a confession: I'm a semi-careful writer, more interested in being incisive than in being pristinely correct. I don't always make a proper distinction between "shall" and "will," (pp. 249-250) and I habitually say "hopefully" when I mean "I hope" or "it is hoped." (pp. 119-120) and I care not a whit whether my infinitives are split or not (pp. 98-100). I used to confuse "which" and "that" but have recently seen the grammatical light (pp. 112-117). My pet peeves include pretentious and PC jargon such as the overuse of "paradigm" when "construct," "body of knowledge" or simply "idea" is meant; or the "woman as victim" use of "empowering" as, after a feminist fringe group meeting in which men are trashed about, it is heard, "That was so empowering!"

To my ears, however, the singular, most annoying usage faux pas is the ungrammatical "between you and I." I would like to observe as an addendum to a reader's discussion on pages 133-134 that "between you and I" is often misused NOT by educated people but by people who unconsciously feel that "I" is somehow grander than "me," especially when THEY are speaking. They may be more educated than the disadvantaged; some may even have attended Yale; but they are usually poorly read and more interested in appearance than substance.

Wallraff mentions the considerable and controversial distinction made between Webster's Second and Third Internationals, and recalls some very fine word experts and usage mavens en route, but curiously does not mention Dwight MacDonald, who wrote a wonderful critique and comparison of those editions that surely Judge Barbara must have read. Also not mentioned are Bergen and Cornelia Evans, authors of the still-influential A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957).

To close (before I exceed Amazon's 1,000-word limit) I should like to recall that while reading Wallraff's discussion of what to call a freshman in this age of PC gender usage, a Neil Simon-like scene came to mind: A darling young thing bounces into her English prof's office and announces her vote: "I'm a freshperson!" To which the professor sagely nods, "Indeed you are."

I first saw this book in paperback and was tempted to buy it. But when I realized that it was more than a read-once, in fact a reference book, I ordered the hardback - a terrific exploration of far more than grammar, despite Barbara Wallraff's email moniker at The Atlantic - our language, how it is changing and how we use or abuse it, and all said so nicely. It's beside my desk, handy for a quick read or a reference.

I'm a big fan of the author's column in The Atlantic, and so for me reading this book was like eating salted peanuts: I just kept reading one more question-and-answer, and then one more question-and-answer. There seems to be a lot of stuff in here that has never appeared in the column. I couldn't put the book down. A usage guide that's a page-turner? Who knew.