Marsha Woerner reviewed Bad English by Ammon Shea
Review of 'Bad English' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
What a fun and interesting book! I pride myself in being current on grammar and knowledgeable about vocabulary and usage, but this book sort of throws it all away! It points out the histories of words and phrases and their origins as well as indicating why some are very much frowned on and where the "misuses" originated. I personally am no less likely to notice when someone "misuses" a subject versus object form of a pronoun, but I feel better about my decision not generally to point it out (it really has always been rude :-) ). In the end of the book, it goes through a list of often misused – in some contexts and some people's opinions – words and phrases and when they were determined to be "wrong". I really liked the book :-) , and now I can use some of the ideas to help myself …
What a fun and interesting book! I pride myself in being current on grammar and knowledgeable about vocabulary and usage, but this book sort of throws it all away! It points out the histories of words and phrases and their origins as well as indicating why some are very much frowned on and where the "misuses" originated. I personally am no less likely to notice when someone "misuses" a subject versus object form of a pronoun, but I feel better about my decision not generally to point it out (it really has always been rude :-) ). In the end of the book, it goes through a list of often misused – in some contexts and some people's opinions – words and phrases and when they were determined to be "wrong". I really liked the book :-) , and now I can use some of the ideas to help myself in main language usage and decisions and know on what they are nominally based.
