ALL THE RESEARCH!!! Does Brandreth cite any of all the research? No. Of course he doesn’t. You’ll just have to trust him that all. the. research. says this. Anyone interested in etymology would really enjoy this book, it would make a great present for the language lover in your life. Highly recommended. He went from presenting Puzzle Party in the 1970s, to appearing in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner for over 300 episodes. His career has since encompassed becoming an MP and appearing regularly on TV and radio, but writing is his true passion.

Lol. The subject of the sentence is absolutely not the person or thing doing the action – that’s the agent and that’s a semantic analysis. The Subject is a term for syntactic analysis and we figure out what it is in a few different ways. But guess what? The subject of a sentence in English can be a noun phrase, a prepositional phrase, a finite clause, a non-finite clause – all kinds of stuff. Again, just a peak into a linguistics book or a grammar would clear this up for Brandreth. But I guess it’s too much torture. If we’ve not met before, let me introduce myself. My name is Gyles Brandreth, and I’m a language obsessive and a punctuation perfectionist. (That doesn’t mean to say I always get it right, but I always aim to.) My mother was a teacher; my father was a lawyer; they brought me up with a love of words. And they sent me to good schools. I was educated by teachers of English who knew their grammar and the value of it. As a child I read dictionaries at breakfast and asked for a copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage for my tenth birthday. I have loved word games all my life. When I was twenty-three, I founded the National Scrabble Championships. Since then, whether as a journalist or a broadcaster, an actor or a member of Parliament, words have been central to my life. I am proud to be the longest-serving resident in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner on Channel 4, the host of BBC Radio 4’s Wordaholics, a regular on Radio 4’s Just a Minute, a reporter on The One Show on BBC1, and the chancellor of the University of Chester. Words are my everything. A witty and well-informed guide to the vagaries of English grammar. Heed his words; you won't regret it Country & Town House, (Best Books to Go Under the Christmas Tree)Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn’t when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn’t set in stone. Once upon a time, to split an infinitive was wrong, wrong, wrong. Since the coming of Star Trek in 1966, when “to boldly go where no man has gone before” was what the now-iconic TV series promised to do, we’ve all been at it. “To actually get,” “to really want,” “to truly love,” “to just go”—you may not like them as turns of phrase, but take it from me: they are acceptable nowadays. End of. Pedantic about punctuation or scrupulous about spelling? You'll love this hilarious and definitive guide to 21st century language from grammar-guru Gyles Brandreth Many competent writers can do everything Brandreth recommends in the book, but would be hard pressed to enunciate the rules in a clear and entertaining fashion. This is where Brandreth excels: he is brilliant, for instance, on the difference between the semicolon and the colon. “Look at the colon and think of it as a pair of binoculars placed vertically on the table,” he advises. “It is there to help you look ahead.” He is sound, too, on dashes and apostrophes; on the difference between “may” and “might”; on how to form unusual plurals (“lord lieutenants”, “attorneys general”). I was especially pleased to see him insisting that you need a comma “to separate two independent clauses when they are linked by a coordinating conjunction” (like “and” or “but”), since one person who used to have the misfortune to edit my writing systematically removed all the ones I put in, which was a dagger to my tiny heart every time. Brandreth insists that beginning a letter ‘Hi, Gyles’, with a comma between salutation and name, is ‘sinister’ I’m going to focus on two parts here: Brandreth’s misunderstanding of discourse markers and his misunderstanding of grammar (including his own). First, let’s talk about everyone’s favorite word: like.

If you love digging into English grammar and poking at the inconsistencies, this might be for you even if you don't really need another usage manual. Brandreth's tone is conversational and funny, and his advice is good, if broad. I particularly enjoyed the historical info and info on differences between British and American English. This has a much nicer tone than Eats Shoots and Leaves, so I'd recommend it over that one to people who want to learn more about usage. Brandreth doesn't belittle his reader who doesn't know as much as he does about grammar, which is a huge plus. This book won't take the place of my beloved Garner's American Usage (now Modern English Usage in the 4th edition) but it certainly deserves a place on my bookcase and in my recommendations to students. This episode they are joined by Ben Crystal, leading practitioner of Shakespeare modern original practice performance and production, Rai Rafiq from the award-winning Mostly Lit podcast and writer Paul Bassett Davies. More misidentified passives –…And Read All Over on The subject is not (always) the “doer” in a sentence I am passionate about the English language. It’s the richest language in the world. It’s our heritage—and our hope. All the research shows that the better the English you speak and write, the happier and more successful you will be. People with better English get better jobs because they write better CVs and communicate more effectively in interviews. People who punctuate poorly and spell badly get lower marks in examinations—and in life. People with better English are more likely to secure the partner of their dreams because (the research shows) when it comes to wooing, words are more important than looks, money, or sex appeal. People with better English are healthier and live longer because they can understand and communicate better with doctors, nurses, and caregivers. Good English makes all the difference. And, alarmingly, good English is under threat.

Best book ever. Oh, the love. English explained easy and fun, specially parts of English usage that sometimes aren’t covered in classes, or teachers just don’t mention. I have learnt many things that I always wondered about because no one ever bothered to explain, and I learnt some others that I didn’t know about (now I’ll be using the word ‘niblings’ at any chance I get). Our language is changing, literacy levels are dwindling and our grasp of grammar is at crisis point, so you wouldn't be alone in thinking WTF! But do not despair, Have You Eaten Grandma?is here: Gyles Brandreth's definitive (and hilarious) guide to punctuation, spelling, and good English for the twenty-first century. A] witty usage guide… Bolstered with an epilogue giving straightforward definitions for different parts of speech, his passionate, enlightening, and easily navigable manual is certainly the right book at the right time.” And a chapter at the end with all the grammar they stopped teaching around 1973 (and as such I missed). HAVE YOU EATEN GRANDMA? OR, THE LIFE-SAVING IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT PUNCTUATION, GRAMMAR, AND GOOD ENGLISH

Gyles Brandreth writes an entertaining and informative book about grammar and punctuation. I am a lover of words and truly appreciate the book. He writes in his self-deprecating manner which (hyphen may or may not be needed) ("which" is appropriate here as it refers to "manner" and it is a thing, not a person). He ends the book with a short chapter on "the language of grammar." This is where he defines nouns, verbs, participles, and those other constructs of sentences that may have contributed to the reason many people resist anything to do with grammar. This is what we call anecdotal evidence. One schoolboy on one bus in one city on one day and in one sentence is given as evidence that like “has become the go-to linguistic filler of our times”. I know you think you’re good with language, Gyles, but that’s not how linguistics works. Listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, every one of eight consecutive interviewees began their first answer with either the word ‘Well’ or the word ‘So’. It’s so annoying – and, well, unnecessary. (p. 237) My husband is dark and handsome. when it is dark he's handsome. I will now have a funny example to explain a subordinate clause. Have you Eaten Grandma?" Good question. And one you could legitimately ask of your brother, your sister, or any of your first cousins, should you suspect them of being cannibalistically inclined.Whether you are obsessed with getting grammar right, baffled by grammar or (like us) just in love with words, you are going to love this. A hilarious and definitive guide to 21st-century language Newcastle Evening Chronicle