Better Than Great: A Plentitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives - Softcover

Arthur Plotnik

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0285641336 ISBN 13: 9780285641334

Publisher: Souvenir Press, 2012

Synopsis

A veritable "tko of terminology," Better Than Great is the essential guide for describing the extraordinary -- the must-have reference for anyone wishing to rise above tired superlatives.

Deft praise encourages others to feel as we do, share our enthusiasms. It rewards deserving objects of admiration. It persuades people to take certain actions. It sells things.

Sadly, in this "age of awesome," our words and phrases of acclaim are exhausted, all but impotent. Even so, we find ourselves defaulting to such habitual choices as "good," "great," and "terrific," or stock synonyms that tumble out of a thesaurus -- "superb," "marvelous," "outstanding," and the like. The piling on of intensifers such as "totally" only makes matters worse, while negative modifiers ("incredible," "unreal") render our common parlance nearly tragic. Until now.

Not to mince words, wunderkind of word-wonks Arthur Plotnik is proffering a well-knit wellspring of worthy and wondrous words to rescue our worn-down usage. Plotnik is both hella AND hecka up to the task of rescuing the English superlative, offering readers the chance never to be at a loss for words of praise and acclamation!

About this title

From the Back Cover

Say goodbye to "awesome" and "amazing" and say hello to Better Than Great, a veritable TKO of stale superlatives with almost 6,000 alternative terms. Lexophile Arthur Plotnik presents a skull-spinning assortment of words and ideas for describing extraordinary things—the exceptionally beautiful, joyful, delicious, large, forceful, intense, trendy and more—even 50 gr8t texting superlatives! Better Than Great is the must-have reference for anyone seeking to rise above tired superlatives when the quality matters, as in love, commerce, and the arts. Critics, journalists, poets, speakers, sales reps, bloggers, Twitterers—word slingers from the whole digital and literary spectrum—should find it to be a concussively euphoriant, supernal, larky, epiphanic, über-cool, soul-juddering experience, an upful and endorphining jubilee to make the heart warble. Take your vocabulary of acclaim from woeful to whoa-ful, and don't praise anything without Better Than Great!

About the Author

Arthur Plotnik is a versatile author with a distinguished background in editing and publishing. Among his seven previous books (not to mention 22 pseudonymous potboilers early in his career) are The Elements of Editing and The Elements of Expression, both Book-of-the-Month Club selections, and the best-selling Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style. His articles, op-eds, and literary pieces have been published widely, including his columns in The Writer magazine, on whose editorial board he serves.

Plotnik studied under Philip Roth in the Iowa Writers Workshop, was a reporter for the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union, and after earning a second graduate degree, worked as a Library of Congress staffer in Washington and magazine editor in New York. He received numerous honors and awards as a long-time editor and publisher with the American Library Association in Chicago. He lives in that city with his wife and an avalanchine tumble of jottings for Better than Great.

About this edition

• Publisher: Souvenir Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0285641336
• ISBN 13: 9780285641334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288