Who's... (oops!) Whose Grammar Book is This, Anyway?
C. Edward Good
Barnes & Noble
Nonfiction, Grammar
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Description
Contrary to popular opinion, grammar is not a set of obscure, archaic rules huffed about by stuffy, well-bred professors. Grammar is, quite simply, the art of understanding what is being said and how it should be expressed for maximum clarity. The general opinion of educators these days is that people pick up enough grammar through basic osmosis to see them through most situations, but the facts simply do not support this theory. Even lawyers and doctors today are tripped up by basic grammar. This book, written by a lawyer, is an attempt to break the daunting subject of grammar down into digestible pieces, made relevant by many examples of how good and bad grammar works for (or against) you.
Review
I am one of those people who never diagrammed a sentence in school. Though I always did well in English, my best guide has always been
my ear - what sounds right and what doesn't. The problem with this method is that my ear can't tell me why some things sound right and some
don't, nor can my ear tell me how I might more effectively phrase ideas... a serious problem when one intends to attempt writing stories.
So, I bought this book.
Did it help? More or less, yes. It convinced me that a knowledge of grammar rules is indeed more important than commonly realized or
acknowledged. The more you work with words, the more you should know how to effectively put them together. Sure, you know what is being said.
You can presumably understand what I'm writing here. But do you know how you know what I am saying, or how to be sure others know what you're
saying when you can't just shrug and say, "You know what I mean..."? Do you understand why it matters what order the words go in, or what tense
you write in? If you learned grammar like I did, through general osmosis and playing it by ear, you won't be able to easily answer those
questions in most situations. This book can help.
I trimmed it a point only because the early parts overwhelm. The author promises not to introduce advanced concepts, but in the first chapter
is already throwing terms around with a simple promise that they will be explained later. Granted, it is nearly impossible to isolate any single
part of grammar and study it effectively without seeing how it relates to other parts of speech, but I thought Good could've made a little more
effort to break the reader in gently. If he was getting to the complex terms later, he might have done better not to mention them in the early
chapters. In any event, I enjoyed reading this book. The author's sense of humor and use of real-world examples helped make grammar seem relevant
to everyday life. I don't know that I'd call this a book for beginners, but anyone who wants to learn more about written English and is willing to
plow ahead through unfamiliar terms will benefit from reading it.