isbn 1-59028-055-5
376 pages, $22.00

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PREVIEW THE CONTENTS/
READ THE PREFACE AND
INTRODUCTION (PDF FILE)

PREVIEW PAGES 1–20
OF CHAPTER ONE

Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum have collected some of their most insightful and amusing material from Language Log, the popular web site they founded. Often irreverent and hilarious, these brief essays take on many sacred cows, showing us—among many things—why Strunk & White is useless, how the College Board can’t identify sentence errors in the SAT, and what makes Dan Brown one of the worst prose stylists in the business.

There is plenty here to inspire deeper thoughts as well. Why do Pete Rose's statements fall short of saying “I’m sorry,” and can we learn how to apologize by analyzing his mistakes? Is there such a thing as mind-reading fatigue? What is the meaning of “pluralism” and “Yankeehood”?

Language Log is a site where serious professional linguists go to have fun. There's plenty of fun and plenty to get you thinking about language in new ways in this collection.

“What do linguistics professors do for fun? Savage the SAT, defend ‘Bushisms,’ trash Dan Brown, and show why we must split infinitives—all in witty little essays meant not for specialists, but for everyone interested in how English works. Like Language Log, the site that inspired it, FAR FROM THE MADDING GERUND is exuberant, tart, and totally addictive.”

—Jan Freeman, "The Word" columnist,
The Boston Globe

“This is a lively and insightful collection of observations about language, from real language mavens. Anyone interested in how we talk and write, and what difference it makes to our politics, culture, and science, will enjoy these witty and well-thought-out postings.”

—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor, Harvard University, author of The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and Words and Rules

“Any linguist is familiar with one of those glum little moments when someone they are talking with says ‘Oops—I know I better be careful with my grammar around a linguist!’ Read this book and find out that not only is grammar policing not what linguists do, but that what we actually do is a lot more fun.”

—John McWhorter, author of The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language and Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth
of “Pure” Standard English