The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action—as well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges—including The Yoda Technique, The Belushi Paradigm, and The Eddie Haskell Ploy. Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.

    Ong offers fascinating insights into oral genres across the globe and through time, and examines the rise of abstract philosophical and scientific thinking. He considers the impact of orality-literacy studies not only on literary criticism and theory but on our very understanding of what it is to be a human being, conscious of self and other.This is a book no reader, writer or speaker should be without.

    The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.

    These tales gain their power through plots that connect with the audience on both an emotional and intellectual level.Inside, Ronald B. Tobias details these 20 time-tested plots. Each is discussed and analyzed, illustrating how a successful plot integrates all the elements of a story. Tobias then shows you how to use these plots effectively in your own work.Tobias then goes to the next level, showing you how to choose and develop plot in fiction. He shows you how to craft plot for any subject matter, so that you develop your work evenly and effectively. As a result, your fiction will be more cohesive and convincing, making your story unforgettable for readers everywhere.

    It gave us the concept of the global village; that phrase has now been translated, along with the rest of the book, into twelve languages, from Japanese to Serbo-Croat. It helped establish Marshall McLuhan as the original 'media guru.' More than 200,000 copies are in print. The reissue of this landmark book reflects the continuing importance of McLuhan's work for contemporary readers.

    The book has been stimulating creativity in millions of readers, translated into eleven languages, and used in seminars around the world.Now Roger von Oech's fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

    It is perhaps the liveliest and most entertaining reference work for writers of our time—delighting while it instructs and amusing even as it scolds and cajoles the reader into skillful, persuasive, and vivid writing. The Careful Writer, Mr. Bernstein’s major work on usage, is an indispensible desk reference, and a perennial source of continuing reading pleasure.

    Robert Claiborne then continues with the Anglo-Saxon invaders of England whose language developed into Old English, which in turn slowly developed into Middle English after the Norman Invasion. He also gives an overview of the various dialects of English and slang.

    The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it.

    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.

    This brilliantly clear and gratifyingly concise treatment of the ancient Greek discipline identifies the illogical in everything from street signs to tax forms. Complete with puzzles you can try yourself, Logic Made Easy invites readers to identify and ultimately remedy logical slips in everyday life. Designed with dozens of visual examples, the book guides you through those hair-raising times when logic is at odds with our language and common sense. Logic Made Easy is indeed one of those rare books that will actually make you a more logical human being.

    Open the Cabinet to leap back in time, learn about linguistic trivia, follow a curious thread or wonder at the web of connections in the English language.Paul Anthony Jones has unearthed a wealth of strange and forgotten words: illuminating some aspect of the day, or simply telling a cracking good yarn, each reveals a story.

    But this is a love story and Michael comes to realize that all things are sustained by love and this is where real meaning resides.

    Written in Bob Frissell's warm, personal style with updated commentary, Something in This Book Is True is both an account of Frissell's journey to inner discovery and empowerment and a most unusual reader's guide. Delving into topics as eclectic as polarity consciousness, emotional body clearing, and higher selves, Frissell affirms that humanity is composed of spiritual beings having human experiences—not vice versa. This new edition incorporates photos and illustrations into Frissell's engaging text.

    The emphasis is on political, social and cultural forces that affect language. The fifth edition reflects the latest trends and statistics of the past 10 years in a revised and updated Chapter One, "English Present and Future." It also provides a new section on gender issues and linguistic change and includes a thorough revision of Chapter 11, "The English Language in America," including updated material on African American Vernacular English. Discusses Black English and varieties of English in both Africa and Asia, as well as varieties in the United States, Australia and Canada. Includes a map of American dialects. Provides examples of twentieth-century vocabulary. For multilingual readers or anyone who wishes to develop a well-rounded understanding of present-day English.