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Summary: Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plai
Review: A lighthearted guide written for the grammatically challenged (that includes just about everyone) giving straight advice on the most common mistakes made by writers. O'Conner (copy editor, considers pronouns, split infinitives, subject verb agreement, and cliches, handing over understandable, adult explanations devoid of jargon and dashed with humor e.g. "alright. No, is not <-->it's all wrong." The volume has been selected as a Book-of-the-Month Alternate Selection.
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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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Summary: Woe to anyone who bypasses this one!
Review: Do you suffer from dangling modifiers? Does fretting over knowing where to place your commas give you a rash? Do "farther" and "further" throw you for a loop? Do you run screaming at the mere thought of using a semicolon? If so, then Patricia T. O'Conner's "Woe Is I" is your best medicine.Writing in a pun-filled style that uses sentence examples ripped right out of such pop culture staples as "The Simpsons" and "The Honeymooners", O'Conner covers everything from punctuation perfidy to vexing vocabulary. Best of all, once she tells you the correct usage, she lets you know that rules truly are made to be broken, giving us the scoop on just how (and when) to break them--while still maintaining some sense of grammatical decorum. If the mere thought of cracking open "The Chicago Manual of Style" causes palpitations, then you'll reach for this one knowing that the author does a wonderful job of simply getting to the point. With only 230 pages of text in an easy to handle trade paperback size (and set with an easy-on-the-eyes typeface), this is not an imposing tome. You don't have to be an Oxford-educated English Department chairman to appreciate this one. "Woe is I" is a book everyone can use. No matter what your profession or station in life, if you speak English, you'll want this as a reference. Six stars, if that were possible.
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Summary: English As An A+
Review: Great book for those who have trouble keeping up with the English words.
Excellent resource.
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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!
Rating:
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!
Rating: 
Summary: Insulting
Review: I found this book to be incredibly insulting to my knowledge. While O'Connors certainly knows how to entertain, she does the English language no favors in Woe is I. Her style of writing is poor to say the least, and the content in even worse. I would not recommend this book to anyone who truly wants to perfect their understanding of American- English grammar.
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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: Exceptional book. Highly recommended! 10 stars!!!
Review: I'll keep this short and sweet. I manage a group of technical writers at work. For consistency in the professional world of writing, they use the Chicago Manual of Style as the definitive source. Secretly, our lead writer told me she likes "Woe is I" better. I know why: It is much easier to use, has a great index, is fun to read (no one will ever say that about the Chicago Manual of Style), and covers all the essentials. I highly recommend "Woe Is I" to everyone that cares about grammar. For those people, like me, that just want a quick reference to help them write well enough, this is perfect. If you are a professional, buy "Woe Is I" to complement your Chicago Manual of Style. I bet you will use "Woe Is I" more often :)
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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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