“Casagrande
flashes a delightful, multilayered wit on just about every page, laced with the
sort of
pleasing
wordplay that even a ‘grammar snob’ surely could learn to love.”
-- Nick Budnick,
Mortal Syntax: 101 Language
Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs
— Even If You’re Right
Can you say “on
accident”?
How about “the
reason is because”?
Can you use
“which” in place of “that”?
Must you scratch an
itch, or can you itch it?
Is it “I feel
badly” or “I feel bad”?
These are just a few of the
questions to which the grammar snobs want no answers. Good information would
just get in the way of their clobber-first-ask-questions-never campaign. And
that’s why these are just a few of the 101 language choices found in Mortal
Syntax. For each of these snob-provoking usages, I consult more than a dozen
reference works to determine whether you can really get away with the usage in
question, or whether you should avoid it altogether.