Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition
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Product Description
The bestselling grammar book has been updated and revised to include the latest and greatest on the basics and subtleties of English, and features a new chapter on the language of the Internet.Amazon.com Review
Written by Patricia T. O’Conner, an editor at the New York Times Book Review, Woe Is I gives lighthearted, witty instruction on the theme most of us dreaded in school–grammar. Discussion is brief and concise, and much more engaging than the grammar books you may remember. With chapter titles such as “Woe is I: Therapy for Pronoun Anxiety,” “Your Truly: The Possessive and the Possessed,” “Verbal Abuse: Words on the Endangered List,” “Comma Sutra; The Joy of Punctuation,” and “Death Sentence: Do Cliches Deserve to Die?,” O’Conner proves that even grammar can make for entertaining reading.
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I establish 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.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The first place I went to find out about “woe is I” was in the pointer.
I looked up “woe” but the word was not there. I looked up “I” which
directs the reader to pages 10-13. “Woe is I” is not treated in these
pages. Not having a discussed topic listed in an pointer is a sign of a
poor pointer. I had to find it for myself. Luckily, I did not have to
read too far, because “woe is me” is briefly discussed in the
introduction:
“Hundreds of years after the first Ophelia cried “Woe
is me” some pedants would argue that Shakespeare should have written
“Woe is I” or “Woe is unto me.” (Never mind that the rules of English
grammar weren’t even formalized in Shakespeare’s day.) The point is
no one is exempt from having his pronouns second guessed.”
First of
all, who are these pedants? O’Connor does not name them but I suspect
she is referring to an “On Language” column written by William Safire
and republished in his “In Like with Norma Loquendi” pages xiii-xv.
Secondly she does not clarify the grammar of “woe is me” at all and
gives no hint if she prefers that to “woe is I” or “woe is unto me.”
Did Shakespeare use the incorrect case? Or is there something else going
on? My objection to O’Connor is that she raised the issue of “woe is
me” but did not clarify it. This is not just a matter of second
guessing which pronoun Shakespeare should have used. It is a matter
of understanding the grammatical rules of Early Modern English. We
know a fantastic deal about the grammar of Early Modern English, the
English of Shakespeare, because of scholars like E. A. Abbott and
Wilhelm Franz. We know from them that the “me” in “woe is me” is not
in the place of the nomanative “I” but a dative pronoun. We know from
them that dative pronouns, indirect objects and the like, were much
less likely to have a preposition in front of them in Early Modern
English than in Present Day English. But O’Connor makes no mention of
this. Readers will have to go else where to get this kind of
information. If you want to know more information “woe is me” I can
recommend a few books to look at. Abbott’s “Shakespearian Grammar”
and Onions’ “Modern English Syntax” treat various constructions with
“woe” with admirable brevity. For comprehensive treatment readers
should read Maetzner’s “Englische Grammatik” and Franz’s “Die Sprache
Shakespeares in Vers und Prosa.”
As for the rest of O’Connor’s book
I would recommned that readers be skeptical and suspicious of her
conclusions.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
In linguistics, grammatical “experts” are referred to as prescriptivists–persons who say that there is a right way and a incorrect way to use a language. Query, but, what is the point of a language–to communicate an thought between people. So long as you can meet this objective, a linguist would say you have met your goal. Adage, as Ms. O’Conner does, that you shouldn’t talk to certain people due to their grammatical choices only reinforces an elitist attitude which is nearly religious in scenery where grammatical prophets are deemed heretics and outcast from the elite just as quickly. As a replacement for, we should appreciate the differences among people, see the beauty in the differences in language, try not to offend others with our language, and appreciate the gorgeous miracle that is language. To do otherwise is to miss out on the marvel of spontaneous order that is language.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I didn’t like this book at all. I couldn’t cut through the “humor” the leader tried to described to see what points she was really trying to make. Was hard reading. Not recommended.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
O’Connor oversimplifies the grammar she is attempting to teach. Just how many times does she have to write about they’re, their and there? It seems that she repeats herself throughout many of her chapters. I expected this book to provide a challenge for me, as a replacement for it was just confirming things I already knew. This is truly for the grammarphobe, one who has small grasp of writing correctly. She does point out some excellent things though. One example is that a name can get away with more errors in language than in writing. She also addresses the fact that some of us learned incorrect English as spoken English.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5