description: Karen Elizabeth Gordon is no ordinary grammarian, and her works (including The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and The Disheveled Dictionary) — are no ordinary books of grammar. The 1984 classic, The Transitive Vampire is populated by a wickedly decadent cast of gargoyles, mastodons, murderous debutantes, and, yes, vampires (both transitive and otherwise), who cavort and consort in order to illustrate basic principles of grammar. The sentences are intoxicating — "How he loved to dangle his participles, brush his forelock off his forehead with his foreleg, and gaze into the aqueous depths" — but the rules and their explanations are as sound as any you might find in Strunk and White. Outlining the building blocks of the English language, from parts of speech to phrases and clauses, The Transitive Vampire goes on to exorcise such grammatical demons as passive voice, fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences. At last, a handbook of grammar you will actually want to read.
language: English
title: The Transitive Vampire
titlecomplete: The Transitive Vampire
genres: Writing, Reference, Linguistics, Vampires, Education, Nonfiction, Horror, Language, Humor, Teaching
ratings_count: 1500
publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd