The bestselling grammar book has been updated and revised to include the latest and greatest on the basics and subtleties of English, and features a new chapter on the language of the Internet.

    But have you ever stopped to wonder where these peculiar terms actually came from? Most of those found in this book have their origins in the Medieval Books of Courtesy, among the earliest works to be published in this country. Despite originating as a form of social etiquette reserved for the gentry, many of these collective nouns have survived to become a curious feature of today's everyday language. This absorbing book tells the stories of these evocative phrases, many of which have stood the test of time and are still in use today. Entertaining, informative and fascinating, An Unkindness of Ravens is perfect for any history or language buff.

    Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium.Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including:Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain?Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves?With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know?Will all these influences, in turn, change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives?Will the chain of digital influences ultimately influence the use of the critical analytical and empathic capacities necessary for a democratic society?How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain?Who are the "good readers" of every epoch?Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become, inevitably, increasingly dependent on screens.Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, technology, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.

    In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.

    He proposes his solution.

    I say potahtoAnd--wait a second, no one says potahto. No one's ever said potahto.Have they?From reconstructing Shakespeare's accent to the rise and fall of Received Pronunciation, actor Ben Crystal and his linguist father David travel the world in search of the stories of spoken English.Everyone has an accent, though many of us think we don't. We all have our likes and dislikes about the way other people speak, and everyone has something to say about 'correct' pronunciation. But how did all these accents come about, and why do people feel so strongly about them? Are regional accents dying out as English becomes a global language? And most importantly of all: what went wrong in Birmingham?Witty, authoritative and jam-packed full of fascinating facts, You Say Potato is a celebration of the myriad ways in which the English language is spoken - and how our accents, in so many ways, speak louder than words.

    It is not a simplified study, but a selective grammar that points out many time-saving short cuts.Constantly drawing comparisons with English construction, it covers all of the important points in French grammar (verb forms and tenses, parts of speech, negative sentences, possessives, partitive construction, etc.) fully and logically, and with refreshing clarity. It was created for those who prefer the phrase approach, and all grammatical points are illustrated with phrases and sentences that you can incorporate directly into your working vocabulary. Many of the discussions include a list of common expressions that use the rule under study.In addition to the grammar text itself, there are several unusual features of great value to anyone who wants to build a French vocabulary: a section on common word-endings and their French equivalents, for example, and a 50-page lit of French-English cognates.This grammar does not assume any previous knowledge either of grammatical terms or of French grammar. English grammatical terms are explained in a separate section and all discussion begins with essentials and works up from there. Use it as an introduction to grammar, for independent class courses, with phrase courses, as a refresher, or for beginning self-study.

    "Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese" is a complete package of instructional materials for beginning language study.

    It includes complete descriptions of each sign, plus full-torso illustrations. There is also a subject index for easy reference as well as alternate signs for the same meaning.

    It tells the story of two parents from different cultural, linguistic, and ethnic-racial backgrounds who joined to raise their two children with their heritage languages outside their native countries. It also tells the children's story and the way they negotiated three cultures and languages and developed a trilingual identity. It sheds light on how parental support contributed to the children's simultaneous acquisition of three languages in an environment where the main input of the two heritage languages came respectively from the father and from the mother. It addresses the challenges and the unique language developmental characteristics of the two children during their trilingual acquisition process.

    How do you react to sandwich boards, road signs, laminated instructions, and other written missives that are just not exactly what their creator meant? If you've ever (gently) judged anyone else for their linguistic failures, if you find yourself guffawing about the frequent confusion between "incontinence" and "inconvenience," if you've ever been tempted to whip out your marker to add in or cross out apostrophes, and if you've refused to answer e-mails in which "your" and "you're" are used interchangeably, this book is for you. With pictures culled from the Facebook group by the same name, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar is a hilarious and eye-opening tour through restaurants and shops, through parking lots and along winding roads, and around the world.

    Now that you're making the shift to online teaching, it's time to answer your biggest questions about remote, digitally based instruction:How do I build and nurture relationships with students and their at-home adults from afar? How do I adapt my best teaching to an online setting? How do I keep a focus on students and their needs when they aren't in front of me? Jennifer Serravallo's Connecting with Students Online gives you concise, doable answers based on her own experiences and those of the teachers, administrators, and coaches she has communicated with during the pandemic. Focusing on the vital importance of the teacher-student connection, Jen guides you to:effectively prioritize what matters most during remote, online instruction schedule your day and your students' to maximize teaching and learning (and avoid burnout) streamline curricular units and roll them out digitally record highly engaging short lessons that students will enjoy and learn from confer, working with small groups, and drive learning through independent practice partner with the adults in a student's home to support your work with their child. Featuring simplified, commonsense suggestions, 55 step-by-step teaching strategies, and video examples of Jen conferring and working with small groups, Connecting with Students Online helps new teachers, teachers new to technology, or anyone who wants to better understand the essence of effective online instruction. Along the way Jen addresses crucial topics including assessment and progress monitoring, student engagement and accountability, using anchor charts and visuals, getting books into students' hands, teaching subject-area content, and avoiding teacher burnout.During this pandemic crisis turn to one of education's most trusted teaching voices to help you restart or maintain students' progress. Jennifer Serravallo's Connecting with Students Online is of-the-moment, grounded in important research, informed by experience, and designed to get you teaching well-and confidently-as quickly as possible. Jen will be donating a portion of the proceeds from Connecting with Students Online to organizations that help children directly impacted by COVID-19.

    L. Doctorow, and Frank Rich, into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls "the confusables," like tricky homophones; the myriad ways to use (and misuse) a comma; and how to recognize--though not necessarily do away with--the passive voice. (Hint: If you can plausibly add "by zombies" to the end of a sentence, it's passive.) People are sharing their writing more than ever--on blogs, on Twitter--and this book lays out, clearly and comprehensibly, everything writers can do to keep readers focused on the real reason writers write: to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively. Chock-full of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts on the rules (and nonrules) of the English language, this book will prove invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and--perhaps best of all--an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

    Since the age of Shakespeare, arguments over correct usage have been bitter, and have always really been about contesting values—morality, politics, and class. The Language Wars examines the present state of the conflict, its history, and its future. Above all, it uses the past as a way of illuminating the present. Moving chronologically, the book explores the most persis­tent issues to do with English and unpacks the history of “proper†us­age. Where did these ideas spring from? Who has been on the front lines in the language wars?The Language Wars examines grammar rules, regional accents, swearing, spelling, dictionaries, political correctness, and the role of electronic media in reshaping language. It also takes a look at such de­tails as the split infinitive, elocution, and text messaging. Peopled with intriguing characters such as Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, and Lenny Bruce, The Language Wars is an essential volume for anyone interested in the state of the English language today or its future.

    "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences is a 2006 book by author Kitty Burns Florey about the history and art of sentence diagramming. Florey learned to diagram sentences as a Catholic school student at St. John the Baptist Academy in Syracuse, New York. Diagramming sentences is useful, Florey says, because it teaches us to "focus on the structures and patterns of language, and this can help us appreciate it as more than just a vehicle for expressing minimal ideas". Florey said in a 2012 essay "Taming Sentences":When we unscrew a sentence, figure out what makes it tick and reassemble it, we interact with our old familiar language differently, more deeply, responding to the way its individual components fit together. Once we understand how sentences work (what's going on? what action is taking place? who is doing it and to whom is it being done?), it's harder to write an incorrect one.Sentence diagramming was introduced by Brainerd Kellogg and Alonzo Reid, professors at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, in their book History of English published in 1877."Keywords: KITTY BURNS FLOREY SISTER BERNADETTE DOG BARKING DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES ENGLISH GRAMMAR REFERENCE LANGUAGE