by David Crystal
Parts of it are basically The Stories of English Lite. Crystal explores the successions of language critics in an entertaining fashion, but spends too long discussing the British National Curriculum. The whole book is basically an argument against the zero tolerance approach to English.On second tho...
I wasn't as thrilled with this book as I hoped. I love discussions of the English language, and I love to see academics tell me that there's no simple prescription for preserving the language; that English is — and must be — a growing language, but this read far too much like a list of things he hat...
Interesting history of language punditry, and Crystal's position is well-reasoned. It turns out I'm more interested in actual linguistics than the drama surrounding language usage. I haven't read [b:Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation|8600|Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Zer...
This deceptively lightweight book should be compulsory reading for every obsessive pedant and equally for those who take a totally laissez faire approach to usage. And in fact, everyone else. It is not an obscure reference work, but a good overview that is accessible to a general audience. For a sli...
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