A world without "whom"

the essential guide to language in the BuzzFeed age

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Emmy Favilla: A world without "whom" (2017)

392 pages

English language

Published July 10, 2017

ISBN:
978-1-63286-757-5
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OCLC Number:
1002665866

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1 star (2 reviews)

As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of "correct" writing? Favilla was tasked with creating a style guide for BuzzFeed, and opted for spelling, grammar, and punctuation guidelines that would reflect not only the site's lighthearted tone, but also how readers actually use language IRL. Now she makes a case for breaking the rules laid out by Strunk and White: she offers a world with more room for writing that's clear, timely, pleasurable, and politically aware.--

1 edition

Review of 'A world without "whom"' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Sigh. Linguistic nonfiction is my literary security blanket. I've read pretty much every pop linguistics nonfiction book out there and enjoyed them all. But not this one!

Emmy Favilla seems to have no sense of who her audience is: she veers wildly between offering highly specific advice for those developing a style guide for heavily perused blogs and pedantically defining "prescriptivism." No sooner does she tell people to follow their own instincts than she derides those whose instincts include "whom." She comes off as pretentious, self-important and judgey. My biggest problem with the book is that I didn't like her. But I didn't like the book either: without much central structure, it wanders through half-hearted odes to descriptivist language use, punctuated with screenshots of the author's slack chats and buzzfeed articles.

Because Internet covered many of the same topics more comprehensively and was much more fun to read.

Review of 'A world without "whom"' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

I can't imagine who said, sure this is interesting enough to make a book out of, but it's not. Jesus Christ, I thought it was going to be a mix of half-memoir, half-interesting grammar bits, but it's all grammar, with maybe 3 pages or so of memoir in the introduction. I thought I liked grammar, but it turns out I don't, not enough to read an entire book on "where do you put the apostrophe?" DNF at 50 pages.

Subjects

  • Authorship
  • Style
  • English language
  • Handbooks, manuals
  • Style manuals