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

Lederer, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312334931 ISBN 13: 9780312334932

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005

Synopsis

Richard Lederer has been called Attila the Pun, Conan the Grammarian, and the Viceroy of Verbivores. In The Revenge of Anguished English, this "Abbot of Absurdity" (as People magazine has dubbed him) leaves us limp with laughter at how the innocent, the negligent, and the pompous mangle the English language. True to the code of this super-duper blooper snooper, all the fluffs and flubs, goofs and gaffes, and blunders, botches, boo-boos, and bloopers are genuine, authentic, certified, and unretouched. Nothing has been made up!

* Student blooper: The four gospels are written by John, Paul, George, and that other guy.
* 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.
* A headline howler: DENVER CHAPTER WILL HAVE SENATOR FOR BREAKFAST
* On a frozen food package: Defrost your frozen food before eating.
* Misplaced modifier: Children should not drive golf carts under the age of sixteen.
* Spelling error: The driver of the car was cited for wreckless driving.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Lederer is the author of more than thirty books on language and humor, including Anguished English and A Man of My Words. His column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and magazines nationwide, and he cohosts "A Way with Words" on San Diego public radio. He lives with his wife, Simone van Egeren, in San Diego.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312334931
• ISBN 13: 9780312334932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192