Book Reviews: Elephants of Style and Lapsing into a Comma by Bill Walsh

Book:  Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary English Author:  Bill Walsh Pages:  238 Format: Paperback Publisher:  McGraw-Hill Book Source:  Independent Purchase Category:  Language Arts/Reference Style:  Funny, smart & eminently readable

Book:  Lapsing Into a Comma:  A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print—and How To Avoid  Them Author:  Bill Walsh Pages:  256 Format: Paperback Publisher:  McGraw-Hill Book Source:  Independent Purchase Category:  Language Arts/Reference Style:  Funny, smart & readable

Okay.  I can hear you already.  You think I've lost my mind in calling a book funny that's about the do's and don't's of Style (meaning, where to underline titles, where to italicize them, how and when to use acronyms, etc., etc., etc.).  I can't really say that I disagree.  It is crazy.  But, Mr. Walsh manages to pull it off.

As a stickler for correctness and very old school when it comes to dangling participles and split infinitives, not to mention the whole issue of constantly morphing comma usage, I find myself wandering through mine fields of doubt when writing in a contemporary voice.  American English is not what it was fifty or even thirty years ago when I was diagramming sentences in sophomore English.  We've loosened up.  We've accommodated change.  Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter for debate, but it is so, and so we adapt or become obsolete.