Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation

Marc Notes: English is a glorious mess of a language, cobbled together from a wide variety of sources and syntaxes and changing over time with popular usage. Many of the words and usages we embrace as standard and correct today were at first considered slang, impolite or just plain wrong. Whether you consider yourself a stickler, a nitpicker or a rule-breaker in the know, 'Bad English' is sure to enlighten, enrage and, perhaps, even inspire. Filled with historic and contemporary examples, it chronicles the long and entertaining history of language mistakes and features some of our most common words and phrases. Biographical Note: Ammon Shea is the author of "Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, " along with "Depraved English, Insulting English, "and "The Phone Book." A dictionary collector, he has worked as a consulting editor of American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. He has also contributed to the "On Language" column in Sunday's "New York Times" and has reviewed language books for the "New York Times Book Review. "He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Review Quotes: "Language is funny, and so is Ammon Shea. His excellent new book tours our irrational prejudices about language, showing that an appreciation for the quirks and ironies of language history can put our understanding on a firmer basis and restore our sense of humor." David Skinner, author of "The Story of Ain't" "On the playground of language, there is no more mischievous laddie than Ammon Shea. I plan to use his new book to split the lip of the next insufferable language prig who saunters into my office to accuse me of bad English." Roy Peter Clark, author of "The Glamour of Grammar" and "How to Write Short" In Bad English, Ammon Shea wastes no time challenging widely held beliefs about just what English is bad. His subtitle, A History of Linguistic Aggravation, gets in an opening jab at sticklers like me, who know that irritate means annoy while aggravate means make worse. Shea, having read the OED to write Reading the OED, is well qualified to tell us we probably don t know as much as we think we do. Washington Post Praise for "Reading the OED" "Oddly inspiring... Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own." Nicholson Baker, "New York Times Book Review" "Delicious...a lively lexicon." "O," The Oprah Magazine "Readworthy." William Safire, "The New York Times Magazine" Shea, an avid collector of words, displays an assortment for our pleasure as he wends his way through the alphabet. "The Boston Globe"" Review Citations: Library Journal 12/01/2014 pg. 52 (EAN 9781494504434, Compact Disc) Contributor Bio:  Shea, Ammon Ammon Shea is the author of two previous books on obscure words, Depraved English and Insulting English (written with Peter Novobatzky). He read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster's Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster's Third International.