Barbara Wallraff

Word Court is based on a regular column of the same name which appeared in the Atlantic. The first half concerns the author's responses to various questions about grammar and the second half is an alphabetically ordered collection of words and how they are best employed.

I'm not entirely sure who this book would appeal to. It's not a refresher course on uses of the subjunctive, but it's also not really aimed at the fluent. Maybe it would be good for an adept but insecure writer.

I learned quite a bit from the book. For one thing, people get very excited about how words are used. Excited enough to write letters and everything. Secondly, I learned that, in general, how you regard certain modern turns of phrase depends entirely upon the year you graduated high school. People are not good with the idea of a language that changes over time. The author is good at advising tolerance, even as she tries to point out that grammar matters. At least if you want to be clearly understood.… (mehr)

Fun book! Based on a column in which readers write in to request new words ("there ought to be a word for...") and other readers send in their suggestions for words to add to the language to accommodate the need. My favorite was the word in response to "There ought to be a word for the state of arriving in a room and not being able to recall why you went there": DESTINESIA. That's one I've found plenty of use for already!

The one word that linguists have been wishing for and for which we still haven't found a suitable answer is the gender-neutral third person singular (instead of the awkward "he or she," "his or hers," etc.). They're still searching!… (mehr)