Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar

Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar

by Jenny Baranick
Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar

Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar

by Jenny Baranick

Hardcover

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Overview

Grammar has finally let its hair down! Unlike uptight grammar books that overwhelm us with every single grammar rule, Kiss My Asterisk is like a bikini: it’s fun, flirty, and covers only the most important bits. Its lessons, which are 100 percent free of complicated grammar jargon, have been carefully selected to include today’s most common, noticeable errors—the ones that confuse our readers or make them wonder if we are, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader. What is the proper use of an apostrophe? When should an ellipsis be used instead of an em dash? Why do we capitalize President Obama but not “the president”? And why is that question mark placed outside of the end quote?

Author Jenny Baranick is an English professor whose students can’t believe she’s actually that into grammar. Upon experiencing the joys of grammar at an early age, raising grammar awareness became Jenny’s raison d’être. By spreading her remarkably user-friendly and hilarious approach to grammar, she hopes everyone will experience the satisfaction of a properly placed comma, a precisely used semicolon, and a correctly deployed en dash.

Kiss My Asterisk shows grammar as it’s never been seen before: uncomplicated, laugh-out-loud funny, and, dare we say, a little risqué.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781510738782
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date: 01/22/2018
Pages: 176
Product dimensions: 5.70(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jenny Baranick has dedicated her career to achieving what many would consider impossible: making writing lessons fun and exciting. She hopes that the readers of her first book, Kiss My Asterisk, enjoy the feisty grammar lessons. She’d like to think that her students at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, where she taught for ten years, were inspired by her lessons on the thesis statement and a properly employed semicolon. She hopes that the attendees of her business writing workshops can’t wait to share their newly acquired understanding of email etiquette with their colleagues. She’s sure that her husband appreciates how she constantly corrects his grammar in front of his friends and family. And she’s positive that her two-year-old daughter enjoys their nightly readings of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi

Introduction: Confidence Is Sexy vii

Chapter 1 Know Thyself: Spelling 1

Chapter 2 It's Complicated: One Word, Two Words, or Three Words 21

Chapter 3 Quality Control: Words That Don't Make the Grade 29

Chapter 4 Missed Periods: Run-on Sentences 33

Chapter 5 More Than a Feeling: Commas 41

Chapter 6 I Do: Apostrophes 57

Chapter 7 Drumroll, Please: Colons 65

Chapter 8 Goldilocks and the Three Bars: En Dashes, Em Dashes, and Hyphens 71

Chapter 9 The Scarlet Punctuation Mark: The Ellipsis 75

Chapter 10 Mary Ann or Ginger: Punctuation with Quotation Marks 81

Chapter 11 That's Hot: Capitalization 85

Chapter 12 Freudian Slip: Using You 103

Chapter 13 How Old Do You Think I Am?: Numbers 109

Chapter 14 Keepin' It Real: Grammar Myth Busting 115

Chapter 15 Avoid Premature Ejaculation: Email Etiquette 123

Chapter 16 Looks Matter: Formatting Academic Papers, Letters, and Résumés 137

Chapter 17 Textual Healing: Proofreading 147

Answer Key 152

References 165

Index 166

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