Mignon Fogarty

This book rates as two stars or four, depending on who you are. If you're an expert English grammarian, Mignon Fogarty's Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing isn't for you; what you need is H.W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage or Karen Elizabeth Gordon's The Transitive Vampire -- or both, really.

However, for hoi polloi grammar needs, Fogarty's slim volume does the trick. If you're stumped on when to use who and whom, further or farther, who's or whose; beset show more with misplaced modifiers galore, or befuddled by colons, semicolons and hyphens, Fogarty will set you straight without jargon, condescension, or obtuse writing. She makes it easy with mnemonics and other tricks. High-school and even many college students could do worse than add Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing to their pile of textbooks. show less

My life would be less frustrating if everyone read this book.

I can be a little (annoyingly) pedantic when it comes to grammar and usage. I'm not concerned about dangling prepositions or split infinitives, but my god, it gets to me when people misuse "affect" and "effect," comma splice, or think that "e.g." and "i.e." are interchangeable. And don't even get me started on "your" and "you're."

Although I expected this to be kind of dry, I found myself laughing out loud. I thought I would know show more everything in it, but I learned quite a bit (like about misplaced modifiers). Did you know that a bad apostrophe (like "banana's for sale") is called the greengrocer's apostrophe? Have you heard the term "CamelCase" before?

Fogarty made it clear what the traditional rules were, what is currently acceptable even if it's not traditional, and what varies from style guide to style guide. There's even a little bit of linguistic history thrown in as a bonus.

I'm off to give this book to all of my coworkers. I hope that won't offend them. show less

I have a few grammar-type books ..which ostensibly help one distinguish between "affect" and "effect"....and similar difficult grammatical issues. But Mignon has a lovely way of putting things and comes up with sensible compromises to current grammar and tricky problems. I think it's a really useful reference. Happy to recommend it and happy to take her advice on a few things where the formal rules don't seem to work too well.

I purchased this eBook for just a couple of bucks through Goodreads' daily sales offer. Reading about writing is hardly ever fun; but, I have to say I really enjoyed this book. The author teaches the English language to foreigners and has her teaching skills finely tuned.

In this book, she has gathered together some of the more common problems writers seem to have about writing. She touched on many of my own problems I have with writing. This will definitely be one of my top go-to books. I show more now wish I had a hard copy.

One thing I have learned from this book is that the rules for writing are forever changing. What I may have learned in high school, back in in the 1980’s, may no longer apply today. I was surprised to find some rules of writing were more about style rather than being a hard and fast rule. It will depend on your editor, your teacher, your boss. This book was published in 2008 and I’m sure there have even been changes since then.

You can stay up-to-date by following her on Facebook (Grammar Girl); subscribe to her free weekly Grammar Girl podcast at iTunes; or subscribe to e-mails from her Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips website. show less