Few Words About Words : A Common-sense Look at Writing and Grammar

All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to food charities throughout the United States.

Winner of the 2021 Foreword Reviews Indies Award for Humor
Honored as a Top Notable Indie in the 2021 Shelf Unbound Competition

Penned by a writer who had to teach himself the rules of English grammar, A Few Words About Words offers an easy and accessible approach to understanding and using the English language.

In a world dominated by countless print and social media outlets, written communication is king. Writing "your" when you mean "you're" and "there" when you mean "they're" can make the difference between getting or not getting new business. A missing comma can result in a PR catastrophe, and a well-written line can be remembered for generations. And yet, many native speakers struggle with the English language.

Spawned from the widely-circulated and beloved newsletter of the same name, Joe Diorio's A Few Words About Words blends quick-witted anecdotes from more than 30 years of newsletter entries that highlight the common, uncommon, and surprising grammar mistakes most English speakers make. The result is a digestible, all-encompassing look at English grammar.

Humorous, enlightening, and completely comprehensible, A Few Words About Words will be the go-to grammar guide you pick up and can't put down.

Joe Diorio has been a writer all his life. As a grade schooler he wrote and illustrated his own comic books, in high school he was a stringer for a local weekly newspaper, in college he was a reporter and editorial writer for the school newspaper, and later he worked as a newspaper reporter, freelance writer, corporate speech writer, and as a public relations professional for agencies and colleges. “I have one marketable skill; I can write a simple declarative sentence. Since I use the dictionary, I almost always spell everything correctly. That’s trite, but it sums up what I do and how I have made a career out of the written word,” he says. He’s written about computers, consumer electronics (Remember the mini CD player from Sony? No, you don’t. No one does.), PET/CT scanners, and shipping containers for rolls of stainless steel. (Yes, that’s a thing.) He’s most proud of his newsletter, A Few Words About Words, which is a layman’s look at language. One reader said that, after reading Joe’s newsletter, they miss William Safire a bit less. True or not, he likes that comparison. Joe and his wife, Susan, live in Nashville, Tennessee.