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    The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing
    The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing
    The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing

    Written by Mignon Fogarty

    Narrated by Mignon Fogarty

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Mignon Fogarty can't remember whether it was a misused semicolon, a chronic case of comma splicing, or an "affect" when an "effect" was called for, but at some point she had seen one mangled sentence too many. Determined to counter the slipping standards of good writing in daily discourse, Mignon created a weekly podcast called Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing to reach all offenders—from the intimidated to the apathetic. In less than a year, more than five million Grammar Girl podcast episodes have been downloaded, and Mignon has appeared in the pages of The New York Times and dispensed grammar tips on Oprah. In Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing, Mignon tackles some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. From "lay vs. lie" and "affect vs. effect" to split infinitives and run-on sentences, Grammar Girl offers clear explanations and effective memory tricks to help listeners write (and say) it right.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateMar 20, 2007
    ISBN9781427202574
    The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing
    Author

    Mignon Fogarty

    MIGNON FOGARTY is the creator of Grammar Girl and the founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network. She is a five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards, an inductee of the Podcast Hall of Fame, a New York Times bestselling author, and the former chair of media entrepreneurship in the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada. She has appeared as a guest expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today show, and she currently lives in California with her husband, Patrick. Visit her website at Quick And Dirty Tips to sign up for her free email newsletter and podcast.

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    Reviews for The Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Definitely a source and resource. I listen to this audio book as often as I can.
    • 5/5
      Easy read; not many grammar books introduce concepts in a friendly manner. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in sharpening their writing.
    • 5/5
      I have a few grammar-type books ..which ostensibly help one distinguish between "affect" and "effect"....and similar difficult grammatical issues. But< I think, this book is really good. Mignon has a delightfully informal style and manages to inject a lot of common sense into her writing. She is also aware of differences between British and Americas usage, which is really helpful to me, in Australia, where we have somewhat of a hybrid system. I'm reminded of my experience writing a Manual for the World Trade Organisation where they "generally follow British usage but, in many cases, follow American usage. My Editors were respectively, American and Canadian and I found myself conflicted with them in quite a few situations...sometimes over spelling an sometimes over usage. I guess in about 60% of the cases they bowed to my views and experience with British usage and in the balance I accepted their views. It was an amicable working arrangement and I appreciated their professionalism but it did enliven me to the fact that there were significant differences between the two styles.Grammar Girl goes a lot further than just the traditional grammatical issues the trip people up and covers such things as usage on the internet (though I'm ignoring her advice here to capitalise "Internet"). And she has very useful advice about punctuation.......when to use a period at the end of a sentence or at the end of a web address. She also offers a lot of useful mnemonics for remembering correct usage. Overall, a very useful little book which, I hoping, my son might actually refer to from time to time. (I certainly will use it myself with my writing).And, she is not too dogmatic and indicates where usage is evolving and is not shy about suggesting her own preferences where there is room for doubt.Happy to award this book 5 stars.
    • 4/5
      I learned several tips for improving my grammar. After being an author for three years, I'm still brushing up on all things grammatical. Sometimes it makes my head spin. Grammar Girl made refreshing my brain fun. The only drawback was that I wish there was less ad lib. But despite the ad lib, reading her how-to book like a novel allowed me to study her style and observe how she incorporates what she teaches.
    • 4/5
      If you write for business or pleasure this is an excellent resource. It's not a style guide (there are already gazillions of those) but it does tackle 24 of the most common grammar 'issues' by offering easy tips and memory tricks to help you remember grammar rules. The author also produces a weekly podcast on the topic and offers an email mailing list with even more tips for better writing.
    • 5/5
      First, I have to say that I love Mignon Fogarty, and I think she's a genius for marketing a "how-to-improve-your-writing" book with a title that includes the words "quick and dirty." People are looking for a quick fix (hence the "quick"), and any time you can convince people that they're getting away with something (the "dirty"), you are likely to attract readers. Forgarty focuses on grammar issues, but in the context of writing. Issues are addressed and explained one at a time, allowing the audience to select more pertinent and helpful chapters. This is the one book I recommend to my high school seniors at the end of their illustrious career. I tell them everyone needs to know how to write well, and I then promote the book. They're usually sold when they hear "quick and dirty." I loaned my copy of the book to friends who are trying to get through a writing class or requirement. I do keep a copy in my classroom, but for students, I'm more likely to recommend the student edition of the text. This makes a great resource for budding and struggling writers.
    • 5/5
      My life would be less frustrating if everyone read this book.I can be a little (annoyingly) pedantic when it comes to grammar and usage. I'm not concerned about dangling prepositions or split infinitives, but my god, it gets to me when people misuse "affect" and "effect," comma splice, or think that "e.g." and "i.e." are interchangeable. And don't even get me started on "your" and "you're."Although I expected this to be kind of dry, I found myself laughing out loud. I thought I would know everything in it, but I learned quite a bit (like about misplaced modifiers). Did you know that a bad apostrophe (like "banana's for sale") is called the greengrocer's apostrophe? Have you heard the term "CamelCase" before?Fogarty made it clear what the traditional rules were, what is currently acceptable even if it's not traditional, and what varies from style guide to style guide. There's even a little bit of linguistic history thrown in as a bonus.I'm off to give this book to all of my coworkers. I hope that won't offend them.
    • 4/5
      Interesting and great fun. This goes with Grammar Girl's podcasts about usage and the English language.
    • 5/5
      As a language arts teacher, I have referred to, tabbed, and dog eared this book so many times my students begin to groan when I pull it out! Ms. Fogarty puts challenging grammar points so simply with creative situations that I've read portions to my 8th graders because I couldn't put it any better. This is the go to book when I can admit I don't know the answer.
    • 4/5
      Excellent grammar review!