Page 13 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in rural Missouri. My father was a cop. My mother was an Avon lady.

They raised five kids to be clean, be quiet, and be good (with mixed results for

“quiet” and “good”). Education was mostly left to the schools. There were no
tutors, no college prep, no books on how to help children succeed at life. It

worked out for me somehow: I became a constant reader, and with the help of
libraries, I added to my learning.

But nobody emphasized for me that writing and speaking well were

important until I was in my twenties. In grade school and high school—where I
felt I excelled at composition and literature analysis—everything seemed fine. It
was about overall literacy, the broad strokes of language. I listened, I did the

work, and I passed the tests.

But in college, that wasn’t enough. Others noticed I used too many commas.
Professors left embarrassing remarks about my writing on my essays. The

student newspaper editors cut my wordiness to tight journalistic paragraphs that
I couldn’t seem to come up with on my own.

Clearly, there was a higher level of attention I could pay to my writing and
speaking. So, I set out to fix my language.

There was so much I didn’t know.

It turned out to be so interesting I dived in deep and eventually became a
lexicographer—someone who compiles and edits dictionaries—especially

dictionaries for people learning English through classwork rather than by being

born into it.
Later, I became the co-host of a public radio show about words and language

now heard by more than 500,000 people a week around the world. Now, I give