The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language - Softcover

Lederer, Richard

3.9

131 ratings by Goodreads

9780312334949: The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031233494X ISBN 13: 9780312334949

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007

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Richard Lederer has been called Attila the Pun, Conan the Grammarian, and the Viceroy of Verbivores. In The Revenge of Anguished English, Lederer leaves us limp with laughter at how the innocent, the negligent, and the pompous mangle the English language. Lederer loves a good verbal blooper: Unfortunate typos, misplaced modifiers, unintended double-entendres, downright stupidity---it’s all here, collected and celebrated by the most popular anguished language expert of them all. As a bonus, not a single blooper, blunder, or boo-boo has been made up or fiddled with. Consider these bloopers:

In an essay, a student wrote, “The ship that brought the first settlers to the new world was the Cauliflower.”
Many gas stations equipped with snack stores display the sign “Eat Here and Get Gas.”
A classified ad offered “antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.”
Another student blooper: The four gospels are written by John, Paul, George, and that other guy.
A science blooper: Elephants eat roots, leaves, grasses, and sometimes bark.
In a church bulletin: Attend and you will hear an excellent speaker and heave a healthy lunch.
On a baby stroller: Remove child before folding.

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About the Author:

Richard Lederer, Ph.D., is the author of more than thirty books on the English language, including Anguished English, A Man of My Words, Comma Sense, and, most recently, Word Wizard. His syndicated column Looking at Language appears in newspapers and magazines nationwide, and he frequently appears on radio as a language commentator. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Simone van Egeren.

From Publishers Weekly:

Fourth in the Anguished English series (The Bride of Anguished English, More Anguished English, etc.), Lederer's newest collection of grammatical goofs will elicit laughs from start to finish. Cataloguing the hilarious ways in which people mangle the English language, Lederer offers hundreds of new linguistic blunders, from infamous "Bushisms" to poorly worded newspaper headlines. Children, in early experiments with language and logic, utter some of the funniest foul-ups. For example, as a mother desperately pounds catsup out of a bottle, her four-year-old answers the phone and says, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle." In another instance, a mother asks her child what she learned on the first day of school, and the child's reply is: "Not enough. They say I have to go back tomorrow." In addition to these "kiddisms," the book touches upon more adult humor, as in a headline that reads: "Soviet Virgin Lands Short of Goal Again." Complete with ridiculously obvious product warnings, church bulletin bloopers and celebrities caught saying the wrong things, this book celebrates the English language by allowing readers to laugh at others' amusing mistakes. 30 b&w line drawings.

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