Enough About Grammar: What Really Matters and What Really Doesn’t

by Joe Floren

Twain Publishers

This funny and commonsense guide to grammar is aimed at adults in the workplace. Consequently, it is great for high school students who want to know what is really useful for the “real world.” An example will give you a sense of the author’s approach: In discussing poets’ frequent violations of grammatical rules, he says,

Grammarians, sore as anything about poets’ ignoring the rules, asked the government to tax them. The King responded by forcing every rhyme-maker to buy a Poetic License (the cost varying with the weight of the poem). So that solved that. However, pretty soon English peasants and other illiterate folks unable to read the Rules of Grammar also began to take shortcuts in usage. Fearing that if the government clamped down, the people would revolt and storm the Bastille (which, as a precaution, had been located in France), grammarians decided just to let it ride. The true point in this false history is that everyday usage over the centuries has knocked the corners off textbook English.

Many other examples use “work place language”—employees, staff, job descriptions, corporate expenditures, etc.

This book presents the rules that matter, while encouraging the reader to get beyond the idea of just writing correctly. Its goal is to strengthen writing by using clauses with active verbs. The author also tells how to place these clauses within sentences so that they produce the greatest effect. Capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations, and spelling all receive special attention.