The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style
The jokey, conversational style of the Complete Idiot's Guide series is better  suited to some of its many subjects than to others, but for theGuide to Grammar and  Style, it works. This book might not be appropriate for professional proofreaders in  search of the definitive use of the en dash, but it is a solid, amusing volume for those who  daydreamed through grade school and would like to brush up on the fundamentals. Puns,  silly humor, and hyperbole abound, but so do the entertaining quotations from beloved  masters of the English language that author Laurie E. Rozakis has managed to dig up. For  every "The rules of standard written English are ... more frightening than a sail on  theTitanic," there is an amusing tidbit such as this one, courtesy of Calvin  Trillin: "Whomis a word invented to make everyone sound like a butler.  Nobody who is not a butler has ever said it out loud without feeling just a little bit  weird." For every "Like my thighs, the distinction betweenthatandwhichis becoming less firm," we have someone such as James Thurber to  show us how to break a rule in style. "When I split an infinitive," Thurber is  said to have admonished a meddlesome editor, "it is going to damn well stay  split!" The text is highly energetic, and Rozakis cuts to the chase. For instance, she  summarizes one chapter this way: "Don't be a sexist pig; ditch doublespeak; end  euphemisms; can clichés." And she offers us these wise words, from  Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two  words when one will do."