The deluxe transitive vampire : the ultimate handbook of grammar for the innocent, the eager, and the doomed

This is a revised edition of The Transitive Vampire 1984Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.File: true PDF, with front cover Here now is an enlarged version of the only handbook of grammar you will ever want to read. With this special edition, Karen Gordon gives the reader more illustrations and even more examples of confusing appositives, the many uses of gerunds, the complicated matter of agreements. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire spins a lively gothic narrative with such characters as the Debutante, famous courtesan, wolf, bat, vampire, mastodon, pizza chef, lummox, lamia, and trilingual solitary. Gordon conjures up this eccentric cast with a uniquely wicked, witty and playful style. Yet every rule is explained with great clarity and precision. While entertaining the reader with the unexpected, she makes the most intricate and impossible usages clear for the first time. "You will not find a more charming or constructive companion than Karen Gordon," Kenneth Auchincloss reported in Newsweek when Ms. Gordon's punctuation book, The Well-Tempered Sentence, first appeared. "How rare it is to laugh as one studies a grammar text," Doris Grumbach exclaimed on National Public Radio. And in the New York Times, Herbert Mitgang warned, "[Karen Gordon's] sentences might make the Edwardian Brothers Fowler blush and, perhaps, Professor Strunk and Mr. White wince.". For any reader who finds the rules of grammar irregular and confusing, this book should guide him with confidence through the maze of linguistics. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 2 Copyright......Page 3 Dedication......Page 4 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Preface......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 Sentences......Page 18 Words......Page 24 Nouns......Page 46 Verbs......Page 56 Verbals......Page 70 Adjectives and Adverbs......Page 81 Pronouns......Page 92 Agreements......Page 114 Phrases......Page 140 Clauses......Page 155 Fragments, Splices, and Run-ons......Page 170 Follow the Flight......Page 182 Illustration Credits......Page 185 Index......Page 187 About tke Autkor......Page 191

Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Gordon has taken her enormously successful book of English usage and expanded it to include more rules, fine points, examples, and illustrations. Playful and practical, this style book combines classic questions of usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Illus.

Playful, practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit & black humor. Black-&-white illustrations throughout. Introduction Sentences & what we mean by them Words & what kinds of words they are Nouns Verbs Verbals More on verbs Adjectives & adverbs Pronouns Arriving at agreements Phrases Clauses Fragments Comma splices The creation of sentences This guide to the rules of grammar presents amusing instructional sentences to demonstrate correct usage and is illustrated with old engravings