Ellen Jovin

Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian

Rebel with a Clause

Boothby

You feel like an eavesdropper when reading this book in the best way possible. Here, Jovin describes her and her partner's work as a travelling Grammer teacher and confidant with people all over the United States. And she's honestly the best. She shows how much fun exploring the evolution of language, ambiguous rules, and regional differences can be. I appreciated her wit and apparent joy around language, and I loved that she always stressed conveying meaning over rules. There are a lot of pedants out there who have seized on grammar as a convenient arena for putting others down, and Jovin's work here the perfect repudiation of that attitude. 

Because this book is essentially a compilation of vignettes, I think it's better to read it in small pieces over a long period of time, rather than to read it straight through. Buy it if you can and pick it up from your coffee table now and then. Don't check it out from the library, forget about it, and try to power through the whole thing in the last two days before the due date like I did.

Rebel with a Clause Tales and Tips from a Roving Grammarian

Reviews