Have You Eaten Grandma?

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Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn’t when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn’t set in stone. Once upon a time, to split an infinitive was wrong, wrong, wrong. Since the coming of Star Trek in 1966, when “to boldly go where no man has gone before” was what the now-iconic TV series promised to do, we’ve all been at it. “To actually get,”“to really want,”“to truly love,”“to just go”—you may not like them as turns of phrase, but take it from me: they are acceptable nowadays. End of. Gyles Brandreth thinks he gets better healthcare because of the way he speaks. A knowledge of linguistics would help Brandreth from making this dangerous claim. His publisher is also on the hook for allowing this to be published. I don’t think whoever copy edited this book had an understanding of linguistics either. This harmful passage and the pratfall section on grammar is proof of that. No double language is ever changing but it’s also important that we cling to what is the most accurate when it comes to expressing ourselves. Research has shown that those who speak good English have an advantage over those who don’t in many aspects of life. And a chapter at the end with all the grammar they stopped teaching around 1973 (and as such I missed). Join Gyles Brandreth and a group of fellow word nerds as they journey through the intricacies and everyday pitfalls of the English language

Anyone interested in etymology would really enjoy this book, it would make a great present for the language lover in your life. Highly recommended. This is an amazing reference book for people, who care about correct language usage and auto-correct people when they write something wrong (grammar/spelling/punctuation police such as myself). It can be irritating for some but language is one of the most valuable assets of humankind, and I do not think that we should take it for granted. We're losing important cultural values due to misuse of the language, and technology is usually the one to blame for this. Gyles Brandreth beautifully highlights the most common mistakes that we make when we speak English/write in English. Thus, it's not a book to read and leave it to collect dust on the shelf but it should be treated as a timeless reference guide. Listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, every one of eight consecutive interviewees began their first answer with either the word ‘Well’ or the word ‘So’. It’s so annoying – and, well, unnecessary. (p. 237)Best book ever. Oh, the love. English explained easy and fun, specially parts of English usage that sometimes aren’t covered in classes, or teachers just don’t mention. I have learnt many things that I always wondered about because no one ever bothered to explain, and I learnt some others that I didn’t know about (now I’ll be using the word ‘niblings’ at any chance I get). I thought the author often got bogged down while comparing US spelling, vocabulary and so on with the British versions of the same. Brilliant, clear, entertaining, very funny and often outright silly. Brandreth excels . . . in all his linguistic joie de vivre and amusing self-awareness Guardian The incredible life story of Haben Girma, the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School, and her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage.

In this irreverent and conversational style guide, Brandreth makes improving one's langauge skills easy and even fun...great for communicators of all stripes, and, most importantly, it advises readers to follow the evolution of proper language into the future." Best thing ever, laugh-a-lot, spanning everything. Great book, I'm loving this Chris Evans, BBC Radio 2 Chapter one, ‘Basic Punctuation or Have You Eaten Grandma?’, begins the foray into punctuation, followed by ‘Dashes, Hyphens, Slashes and more’, and ‘Apostrophes, Possession and Omission’. Brandreth also covers spelling in this book, with common (and sometimes less than helpful) rules, guides to prefixes and silent letters. There are also chapters on British English versus American English, abbreviations with a fresh inclusion of many that are commonly used today and on social media (some with a very humorous twist), slang, and rules for good communication. There are also fun sections that keen wordsmiths will enjoy, such as the A to Z of useful Scrabble words, and new words.This episode they are joined by Ben Crystal, leading practitioner of Shakespeare modern original practice performance and production, Rai Rafiq from the award-winning Mostly Lit podcast and writer Paul Bassett Davies. Brilliant, clear, entertaining, very funny and often outright silly. Brandreth excels . . . in all his linguistic joie de vivre' Guardian Surveys and YouTube polls which show that some people think that English is under threat. Which is totally different than the language actually being under threat. But, you know, if we recognized that “good” English isn’t actually under threat, then Gyles couldn’t write his book. There are a few places where Brandreth manages to not completely step in it. He tells us not to be which hunters but also says who has to be used for humans (p. 194). So it’s a wash. He also has a surprisingly good explanation of plurals in English – except for the end where he says words like government need to take a singular verb (p. 125). This isn’t the case, especially when the collective noun is made of people. So, again, ups and downs. I love that this book is written for current society and that the author holds to conventional rules and still embraces modern language. From text speech and new abbreviations and initialisations, to the mistakes make in Tweets or statements by past or current politic leaders, as well as the embracing of gender neutral language. My particular favourite is the new ROFL (rolling on floor laughing) for older generations, ROFLACGU (rolling on floor laughing and can’t get up).