How Good is Your Grammar?

John Sutherland, one of Britain's most celebrated professors of English literature, is here to test, stretch, amuse and instruct you with his definitive quiz on all things grammatical. This is neither a rule book nor a primer but a rollercoaster ride through the mysteries and magic of the world's greatest language.

John Sutherland - Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus, UCL - is the author of over 30 works of scholarship and is a well known journalist who writes, regularly, for the London and New York Times, the London Guardian and many more.

Full of tests and quizzes, How Good is Your Grammar? is not a rule book (a 'primer') although the author lays down a set of 'Queensberry Rules' (he is, after all, a professor), before getting on to the interesting stuff...And interesting it is. How much does it matter, for example, that for purists 'Telephone' is ungrammatical, 'Television' grammatical? How grammatically disastrous was the 42nd President's proclamation to the world, 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman'? Does it matter that USS Enterprise resolves to boldly go at warp speed through the split infinitive'..Is text ('txt', 'textese') linguistic barbarism, or a fascinating test-tube example of how grammar adapts to new technological environments? Could the computer have evolved to where it is, today, without a 'grammatical' (Boolean) mathematical / algebraic system of operators (not 'x=y', but 'if this then that')'..Elsewhere 'bad' grammar, as text-books define it, is a creative necessity. Poetry is the graveyard of grammar (think E E Cummings) and popular music dances merrily on grammar's grave ('I feel good!' - surely 'well', James?). Is Dylan's 'Lay, Lady, Lay' an offence to grammar? (No, if you think about it carefully)... Television has two Greek root words, and is therefore grammatical. Telephone has a Greek and Latin root word - a grammatical no-no. For those, that is, who care about such things. Clinton's 'that woman' allows the possibility there were other women...

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.