It's an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

    If you need to extend your verbal eloquence to include vulgarity from 1811, this is the book for you.

    This updated sixth edition retains the structure and style of the popular previous editions, and includes two new, much-requested texts: Wulf and Eadwacer and Judith.The book consists of two parts. Part One comprises an introduction to the Old English language, including orthography and pronunciation, inflexions, word formation, an authoritative section on syntax. This is followed by an introduction to Anglo-Saxon studies, which discusses language, literature, history, archaeology, and ways of life. Sound changes are treated as they become relevant in understanding apparent irregularities in inflexion. Part Two contains verse texts, most of them complete, which fully reveal the range that Old English poetry offers in mood, intensity, humor, and natural observation. Full explanatory notes accompany all the texts, and a detailed glossary is provided.The new edition of this highly-acclaimed Guide will be welcomed by teachers and by anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding and enjoyment of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons.

    Its lessons, which are 100 percent free of complicated grammar jargon, have been carefully selected to include today’s most common, noticeable errors—the ones that confuse our readers or make them wonder if we are, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader. What is the proper use of an apostrophe? When should an ellipsis be used instead of an em dash? Why do we capitalize President Obama but not “the president”? And why is that question mark placed outside of the end quote?Author Jenny Baranick is an English professor whose students can’t believe she’s actually that into grammar. Upon experiencing the joys of grammar at an early age, raising grammar awareness became Jenny’s raison d’être. By spreading her remarkably user-friendly and hilarious approach to grammar, she hopes everyone will experience the satisfaction of a properly placed comma, a precisely used semicolon, and a correctly deployed en dash.Kiss My Asterisk shows grammar as it’s never been seen before: uncomplicated, laugh-out-loud funny, and, dare we say, a little risqué.

    A wickedly entertaining collection of caustic quips and witty criticisms.[Note: originally published as two separate books, The Guinness Dictionary of Poisonous Quotes (1991) and The Guinness Dictionary of More Poisonous Quotes (1992).]

    This structure is designed to address the needs of multilevel classrooms.Supporting components include more guidance on this topic as well as assessing needs and lesson planning. (available in English only).

    Experienced editor and publisher Jane Friedman offers insights from more than 15 years of working on both sides of the desk, and offers step-by-step advice on: • evaluating the commercial potential for your work • finding and approaching editors and agents professionally • preparing query letters and book proposal materials • marketing and promoting your work effectively • protecting your rights and avoid infringing on others’ rights, and • understanding the self-publishing and ebook market—and if it’s the right path for you. PUBLISHING 101 describes the dramatic changes underway in the publishing industry, as ebook sales increase and physical bookstores decrease in number. These changes affect how authors get book deals—meaning you need to be prepared to adapt to a risk-averse industry during a time of uncertainty. Avoid frustration—don’t embark on the submission process without being fully educated about how the industry works. You’ll better focus your time and energy, increase your chances of success, and learn to decipher the language of industry professionals.

    We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

    Today, linguists use massive computer power--including the world's largest language databank, the Oxford Corpus, which contains more than two billion words--to determine for the first time definitively how the English language is used. From evidence contained in the gargantuan Oxford Corpus, Jeremy Butterfield here uncovers a wealth of fascinating facts about the English language. Where does our vocabulary come from? How do word meanings change? How is our language really being used? This entertaining book has the up-to-date and authoritative answers to all the key questions about our language. Butterfield takes a thorough look at the English language and exposes its peculiarities and penchants, its development and difficulties, revealing exactly how it operates. We learn, for instance, that we use language in chunks of words--as one linguist put it, "we know words by the company that they keep." For instance, the word quintessentially is joined half the time with a nationality--something is "quintessentially American" or "quintessentially British." Likewise, in comparing eccentric with quirky, the Corpus reveals that eccentric almost always appears in reference to people, as an "eccentric uncle," while quirky usually refers to the actions of people, as in "quirky behavior." Using such observations, Butterfield explains how dictionary makers decide which words to include, how they find definitions, and how the Corpus influences the process. Covering all areas of English, from spelling and idioms to the future of English, and with entertaining examples and useful charts throughout, this compelling and lively book will delight word lovers everywhere.

    For all those who despair that politics can ever be inspiring again this is a must-read to shake you out of your misery’ Paddy Ashdown ‘There is a serious prospect that, in our time, we are losing faith in politics. The words of politicians float by, practised and polished, but profligate. The respect, veneration and hope first expressed by Pericles, has gone missing. It is the grand purpose of this book to help to call it back.’ In his work as a speechwriter to senior politicians and business leaders around the world, Philip Collins has become well versed in understanding what it is that makes a speech great.When They Go Low, We Go High explores the ways in which the most notable speeches in history have worked, analysing the rhetorical tricks to uncover how the right speech at the right time can profoundly shape the world.Travelling across continents and centuries, Collins reveals what Thomas Jefferson owes to Cicero and Pericles, who really gave the Gettysburg Address and what Elizabeth I shares with Winston Churchill.And in telling the story of the great speeches he tells the story of democracy. For it is in the finest public speeches that progress unfolds, and we need those speeches now more than ever.While we are bombarded by sound bites and social media, fake news and sloganeering, and while populists are winning support, democratic politicians need to find words that inspire and give us hope. Because disenchantment with politics fosters the dangerous illusion that there is an alternative.Informed by Collins’s own experiences as a speech writer, When They Go Low, We Go High is a passionate defence of the power of good public speaking to propagate and protect democracy and an urgent reminder of how words can change the world.

    THE GRAMMAR BOOK, Second Edition helps teachers and future teachers grasp the linguistic system and details of English grammar, providing more information on how structures are used at the discourse level.

     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.

    A ground-breaking book that sets out to demonstrate that Japanese is “simple, logical and beautiful” and that most of the apparently “arbitrary rules” that you “just have to learn” can be reduced to simple, easily intuitive patterns if you just understand how the language really works.

    This book is for students with majors in English, linguistics, secondary education, foreign languages, communication sciences, and other disciplines that need a basic introduction to linguistics.

    Now with the strongest coverage of research writing in a full-sized handbook, the seventh edition helps students meet one of the core challenges of academic writing: maintaining their own voice while writing from sources. This edition also adds innovative tips from writing center tutors, sound advice for writing across the curriculum, and substantially more help for writing with and writing about visuals.