Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation

(Paperback)

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Description

English is a glorious mess of a language, cobbled together from a wide variety of sources and syntaxes, and changing over time with popular usage. Many of the words and usages we embrace as standard and correct today were at first considered slang, impolite, or just plain wrong. Whether you consider yourself a stickler, a nitpicker or a rule-breaker in the know, BAD ENGLISH is sure to enlighten, enrage and perhaps even inspire. Filled with contemporary and historic examples, the book chronicles the long and entertaining history of language mistakes.

Reviews

"Language is funny, and so is Ammon Shea. His excellent new book tours our irrational prejudices about language, showing that an appreciation for the quirks and ironies of language history can put our understanding on a firmer basis and restore our sense of humor."
David Skinner, author of The Story of Ain't

"On the playground of language, there is no more mischievous laddie than Ammon Shea. I plan to use his new book to split the lip of the next insufferable language prig who saunters into my office to accuse me of bad English."
Roy Peter Clark, author of The Glamour of Grammar and How to Write Short

In Bad English, Ammon Shea wastes no time challenging widely held beliefs about just what English is bad. His subtitle, A History of Linguistic Aggravation, gets in an opening jab at sticklers like me, who know that irritate means annoy while aggravate means make worse. Shea, having read the OED to write Reading the OED, is well qualified to tell us we probably dont know as much as we think we do.
Washington Post

Praise for Reading the OED:

"Oddly inspiring...Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own."
Nicholson Baker, New York Times Book Review

"Delicious...a lively lexicon."
O, The Oprah Magazine

"Readworthy."
William Safire, The New York Times Magazine

Shea, an avid collector of words, displays an assortment for our pleasure as he wends his way through the alphabet.
The Boston Globe

Author Bio

Ammon Sheais the author of Reading the OED- One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages along with Depraved English, Insulting English, and The Phone Book. A dictionary collector, he has worked as a consulting editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. He has also contributed to the "On Language" column in Sunday's New York Times and has reviewed language books for the New York Times Book Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.