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Summary: The perfect graduation gift.
Review: College or work bound graduates will surely find this book useful. Far from a dry grammer text, O'Conner uses wit and humor to sell the idea that competant writing demands proper grammer.
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Summary: An absolute lifesaver!
Review: My only problem with this book is that it's not nearly long enough! I work as a technical editor, and trying to explain to Dilbert (sorry, Mr. Adams!) why he won't sound more educated if he uses "which" instead of "that" in his reports is a hair-pulling, daily nightmare. The advice Ms. O'Conner offers is sound and easy to understand, as well as easy to convey to someone who refuses to believe that an illness is diagnosed, not a person.
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Summary: Lawyers Should Read
Review: Those "legal" types who have forgotten how to write simply ought to spend a few hours with Woe Is I. As a reader of briefs, I would appreciate more writing coming my way from those who had read Patricia T. O'Conner
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Summary: One of the BEST books I've ever bought; Lori Buchanan
Review: Whether you are in school or out of school, like(d) English or hate(d) English, this book is fantastic. It's simply interesting to read and, believe it or not, FUN. It is a unique guide to help you do right when so many others are doing wrong. Hit the road Ebonics
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Summary: Newspaper and magazine reviews of "Woe Is I"
Review: The San Francisco Chronicle: "Her commonsense approach is as entertaining as it is instructive. O'Conner has written a nifty guidebook to modern grammar that affectionately elbows the reader on every page." Publishers Weekly: " 'Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English' is enormous fun as well as enormously instructive."
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Summary: The Title of This One Haunted Me.....
Review: I avoided buying this book for weeks, yet I could hear its title reverberating in my ears. "Woe is I!" and "Woe is I?!" and "Woe! Is I."I finally answered the call and bought it. Reading "Woe is I" is like having your own entertaining grammar teacher sitting alongside you as you proof-read your work. Yes, entertaining grammar teacher! You read correctly. (See the chapter on "Saying is Believing -- How to Write What You Mean.") I am a writer who has been known to commit grammatical goofs from time to time. O'Conner's guide to grammar is user friendly, amusing, and makes the subject memorable. It includes a useful glossary and index so that the reader can easily find a solution to his or her grammatical query. I also appreciate the examples O'Conner uses to show incorrect errors and their correction. It is helpful to see the problem "in action" and then see the way she would solve it. O'Conner clucks over the mistakes writers frequently make... though she does so quite gently. The chapter on "Verbal Abuse" is both hilarious and thought evoking. This book is a pleasant companion to Strunk and White's Element's of Style. It does the job with humor -- and many more words than the classic-slim volume of all-you-need-to-know about basic writing. Enjoy this one. If the title calls out to you like it did to me, it must mean you are supposed to read it!
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Summary: Woe is You....if you don't read this book
Review: With "Woe is I," O'Connor has created a modern masterpiece. A broad range of grammar topics are covered, including pronouns, punctuation, split infinitives, clichés to avoid, easily confused words (e.g., anxious versus eager), words that are frequently misspelled, and "words" that really aren't words (e.g., irregardless). You also will find a helpful section on email in this new expanded edition. Fortunately, the guide isn't a stuffy schoolbook; it's actually pretty witty. The most enjoyable section concerns "rules" of grammar that can be bent in all but the most formal writing, such as ending a sentence with a preposition. In addition, examples touch upon great literature (e.g., Shakespeare) as well as popular culture (e.g., Harry Potter), making the book quite entertaining. I actually laughed out loud several times, not something one usually does when reading about grammar! O'Connor also strikes a good balance between being a strict grammarian and being pragmatic - she clearly understands her audience. Some sections aren't as detailed as some readers might like, perhaps the only debit. I read "Woe is I" in a few hours, and I plan on rereading it every year as a refresher. I will keep this book by my computer - I know I'll be using it often. Most highly recommended for writers of all types.
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Summary: The grammatical medicine you WILL want to take.
Review: If you need to keep your writing sharp, or simply want to be taught, in common, everyday terms, the correct rules and usage of the English grammar, then this is the perfect guidebook for you: straightforward, enlightening, fun and free of technical jargon and grammatical fluff.
Extremely well organized, masterfully indexed and fully cross-referenced, it makes all topics readily accessible for fast checkups and repeated consultations. Written in a concise, lighthearted style, and combining witty instruction with sound advice and excellent examples that illustrate beyond any doubt the points being made, this is the most useful, entertaining and humorous book on English grammar available today.
Treated along the most common topics (pronouns, numbers, possessives, punctuation, plurals, cliches, etc.) are other not so common, yet invaluable, subjects: a list of frequent mistakes writers make, a discussion on outdated choices of usage and a glossary.
Overall, this is a very affordable, handy reference and delightful read that you'll keep going back to again and again. If you are a professional writer, you might consider complementing this book with other, more extensive publications like the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk's The Elements of Style. And, for even further study, the book's bibliography constitutes a first-class resource for choosing additional reading material.
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Summary: A good book on grammer; yet the book gets dull quickly.
Review: I fully admit my grammatical failings. I admit it, I'm just not that good. So, I figured that I could polish up on my weakness by reading this book. Did it help? Yes, and no. It did provide a lot of common problems and it did clarify when to use many words (e.g. I versus me, them versus they), and unlike many other books that take dry reference materials and tranform them into readable books, it has a good glossary! The first few chapter provided a lot of good info and was suprisingly fluid.
After the first few chapters, the book gets really, well, boring. About 30 pages are devoted to words that are often mistaken for one another. Many of them I already knew, and I just trudged through word after word. It kind of felt like the I was reading a dictionary.
I also found that tenses and verbs could have been expanded on. She also tends to look at a sentence on a micro scale, which particular word is wrong or which particular sentence is right or wrong. I was hoping for at least some attempt at a macro approach towards sentence structure.
She also delves into punctuation, which is great for reference. She, however, then delves into cliches and e-mail problems. These two chapters sort of felt added on and really didn't teach me much.
All in all, it's decent. It's full of good information, and for what it's about, it's pretty reasonable to read from cover to cover.
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Summary: VERY helpful.
Review: As a proofreader, I have found this book to be as helpful as the AP Stylebook or Chicago Manual of Style. While the CMS rigidly covers rules and the AP Stylebook mainly helps me with individual words or references to organizations, Woe Is I has helped me out of specific sticky situations. For instance, one of my high school English teachers taught that "if I" always went with "were" instead of "was," but I came upon a situation in a book where "if I were" just didn't seem right. Patricia O'Conner, with examples and extremely accessible language, helped me get my mind around the problem so that I could do my job well.
Woe Is I is extremely readable. Unlike the other reference books I mentioned in this review, this book could be read straight through--and the reader would probably retain a fair amount of the information covered in the text. The helpful, humorous writing makes the book a valuable tool; I was skeptical when I received it as a gift, but have found it to be worth its weight in gold.
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