The New Well Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Book Overview

In The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, Karen Elizabeth Gordon manages to make the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395628830
• ISBN13: 9780395628836
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Loona is with us again!

From the author of "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" and "Torn Wings and Faux Pas" comes another humorous reference for remembering and learning proper punctuation. This edition is a revised edition of "The Well-Tempered Sentence" and adds guidelines for dealing with those pesky apostrophes, slashes, and italics.Although I love reading about the escapades of Loona and have recommended this book to others, this book is not for everyone. If large or uncommon words frighten you, then you will be frightened by this book. Even if I tell students that once you are used to the language, this book is great, many don't want to take the time to acclimatize themselves. This is a shame because this is a great book.If only more grammar books were a treat to read! I would highly recommend adding this book to your reference collection or taking the time to refresh your punctuation skills.

Never a Misplaced ,.!;:"?'()][- Again

First, I sadly confess that I much prefer the earlier edition of this book. I can't really tell exactly what has been added to this edition, except to acknowledge that it is longer. The beauty of the first book was that after you looked up whatever you needed to look up, you couldn't put it down. The book still has the same effect, but with a more compelling sense that you really ought to put it down because you have something better to do. I suspect that what has been added is mere "filler": stuff to puff the book up so that people won't mind paying more for it.Nonetheless, this still is the best manual of form to have. It is so remarkably clear, that a textbook review committee would probably wonder whether some mistake had been made. Simply look up the punctuation mark in question in the clearly labeled table of contents, and your question will be answered in no time. Better yet, reserve a Sunday afternoon to read the book cover to cover, and never have a punctuation question again.Yes, I did say read it cover to cover. Ms. Gordon has done for manuals of grammar what Dorothy Parker did for book reviews, or Judith Martin does for etiquette. This is quite an enjoyable romp with cross-eyed scholar-poets, that prima donna [Too-Too LaBlanca], and Torquil and Jonquil, (who will accompany you to the spa on Epiphany, if you accompany them to Ornette Coleman's recital afterwards [sic]).So I must admit, even though I don't think the second edition is any improvement over the first, I still think this book is miles beyond any other of its kind. You may wish to have a more complete manual of style, as this book covers punctuation only, but you will still benefit from having this book. A complete manual of style will devote only a few pages to punctuation, and give few examples; its instructions will never be clear. With The Well-Tempered Sentence by your side, however, you will never punctuate incorrectly again.

Divine!

Since its publication, I have given literally several dozen copies of this splendid, amusingly informative book to friends, to fellow writers, to students, and to anyone with either a passion for language or problems with grammar. It is unique in its wonderfully Gothic approach to conveying the odd and sometimes illogical rules of English grammar. It is also just plain fun. Absolutely a must for anyone even the least bit confused about just where a semi-colon goes, or when to use serial commas. Along with the Rodale Synonym Finder and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, this is a book that lives next to my desk--always. Top marks! There's absolutely nothing, anywhere, that comes near this charming, clever little language guide.

A treat for the eyes' ears

In _The New Well-Tempered Sentence_, Karen Elizabeth Gordon acts as arbiter elegantiae of punctuation. If she is less cheerfully infallible than Fowler, she is also more of an artist of English. Ms. Gordon has great fun playing with the language, and readers are invited to share in the merriment. The first two sentences of her chapter on commas speak for themselves: "A comma is a delicate kink in time, a pause within a sentence, a chance to catch your breath. A curvaceous acrobat, it capers over the page." You'll be entertained with examples haunted by a bizarre cast of characters going about their strange and Gothic business. Keep it on your reference shelf, somewhere between William Zinsser's _On Writing Well_ and Strunk and White's _The Elements of Style_.