Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch Let Verbs Power Your Writing

Name: Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch Let Verbs Power Your Writing
Price: 3.96 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780393081169

ISBN-10: 0393081168

ISBN-13: 9780393081169

Edition: 2012

Authors: Constance Hale

List price: $26.95

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Description:

Writers know itinstinctively: Verbs make a sentence zing. Grammar gurus agree: Drama inwriting emerges from the interplay of a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb).Constance Hale, the best-selling author of Sin and Syntax, zooms in on the colorful world of verbs.Synthesizing the pedagogical and the popular, the scholarly and the scandalous,Hale combines the wit of Bill Bryson with the practical wisdom of WilliamZinsser. She marches through linguistic history to paint a layered picture ofour language—from before it really existed to the quirky usages we see onlinetoday. She warns about habits to avoid and inspires with samples of brilliantwriting. A veteran teacher, Hale gives writing…

Book details

List price: $26.95
Copyright year: 2012
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated
Publication date: 10/15/2012
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Size: 0.59" wide x 0.86" long x 0.12" tall
Weight: 1.254
Language: English

Constance Hale is the author of Wired Style and Sin and Syntax. She has taught at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at HarvardUniversity and UC Berkeley Extension. She is based in San Francisco,California.



Introduction: The Power and Pizzazz of Verbs



Me Tarzan, You Jane: The world before verbs



Up! Cup! Tadatz! Our first sentences



Bastard Verbs: A new angle on the Angles



Grammar Wars: The tension between chaos and control



I Came, I Saw, I Conquered: The dynamics of verbs



Verb Tenses: A rose is a rose is a rose. Until it dies. Then it was a rose



Passive Restraint: Understanding the voice of verbs



Be There or Be Square: Time to master moods



Predicate Etiquette: Making the back end of a sentence behave



Verbal Dexterity: Playing with participles and other cross-dressers



Two-Stroke Engines: Pair a verb with a particle and-presto!



Headache Verbs: Odd usages and other sources of confusion


Epilogue: Got Style?



Chomp-or, um, Chomsky-on this



Each of these cases are complicated. Is complicated?



When it comes to dictionaries, be polygamous



Those sneaky irregular verbs



Phrasal verbs: What's up, what's down



More migraines


Notes


Selected Bibliography


Acknowledgments


Permissions


Index