Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies (June Casagrande)

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies
June Casagrande
Tantor Audio
Nonfiction, Grammar/Humor
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Who (or should that be "whom"?) among us hasn't been the victim of a grammar snob? Ensconced in their ivory towers, surrounded by ancient grimoires containing mysteries of linguistic mastery, they rain thunderbolts down upon the lowly, uneducated peasants who dare split infinitives or misplace apostrophes or confuse homophones or otherwise abuse the holy English language with their cloddish colloquial manglings. Surely, we laypeople think as we cower from the experts' great and terrible wrath, they must be vastly more educated and overall better people than the rest of us. Right?
Wrong.
Syndicated grammar columnist June Casagrande peels back the curtain to reveal the grammar snobs' dirty little secret: they don't know much, if anything, more than we do about how the English language works. The "rules" they cling to with a zealot's fervor often depend on which source one consults, and even the sources can be vague. The only absolute rule is that one must communicate one's ideas clearly. In this book, Casagrande offers numerous tips and tricks to help clear up misconceptions about grammar and bring those snobs down a few pegs.
This audiobook version includes a few of Casagrande's grammar articles, not appearing in the print version.

REVIEW: Like so many things in life, grammar is a basic, useful idea that has been turned into something else entirely by a small handful of gatekeepers... not at all helped by how English as a language often defies logic (even before one takes into account language evolution and drift between various iterations of the language, chiefly England's English versus American English). Much of what we need to know we absorbed subconsciously as we learned the language; it's the attempts to pin down those lessons and bind them in a grammar book that can get so tricky and lead to so much squabbling and - frankly - bullying among know-it-alls. Almost every "rule" has some manner of exception, every style or formality contradicted by some equally-reputable source. Casagrande takes many humorous jabs at other grammar "experts" who love raining stones on others from their own glass houses, even as she offers explanations and hints on how to better understand the subject. It earned the extra half-star for making me snicker out loud at work more than once as I listened.

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