For Fans of Wordle | Arlington Public Library

1) american bee the national spelling bee and the cul

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

2) Bad English: a history of linguistic aggravation

Author

Shea, Ammon

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

"Whether you consider yourself a stickler, a nitpicker, or a rule-breaker in the know, Bad English [may] enlighten, enrage, and perhaps even inspire. Filled with historic and contemporary examples, the book chronicles the long and entertaining history of language mistakes, and features some of our most common words and phrases" -- Dust jacket flap.

3) Because internet: understanding the new rules of language

Author

McCulloch, Gretchen

Series

Thorndike Press large print nonfiction

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

Description

Click to view

Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory...

4) Between you & me: confessions of a comma queen

Author

Norris, Mary

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, Large Type

Description

Click to view

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage comma...

5) A concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers

Author

Guo, Xiaolu

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

Description

Click to view

A young woman from rural China learns how to comprehend love and heartbreak in English in this quirky, touching novel. Zhuang, or Z to tongue-tied foreigners, arrives in London at age 23 after being dispatched by her parents to get an education. Her immersion and painful education are laid bare to readers, who witness Z's vocabulary, grammar and understanding blossom throughout her diarylike account, sped along by an intense romance with a man met...

6) The dictionary of lost words: a novel

Author

Williams, Pip

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

"The Dictionary of Lost Words is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford, written in its place. It was Da's job to open the post and...

7) Dreyer's English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style

Author

Dreyer, Benjamin

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Click to view

"Authoritative as it is amusing, this book distills everything Benjamin Dreyer has learned from the hundreds of books he has copyedited, including works by Elizabeth Strout, E. L. Doctorow, and Frank Rich, into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls 'the confusables,'...

8) Eats, shoots and leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation

Author

Truss, Lynne

Description

Click to view

Lynne Truss, a self-proclaimed stickler, presents a humorous look at the history of punctuation, discussing the use and misuse of commas, apostrophes, semi-colons, and other punctuation marks.

9) Ella Minnow Pea: a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable

Author

Dunn, Mark

10) Every word is a bird we teach to sing: encounters with the mysteries and meanings of language

Author

Tammet, Daniel

Description

Click to view

Is vocabulary destiny? Why do clocks 'talk' to the Nahua people of Mexico? Will A.I. researchers ever produce true human-machine dialogue? In this mesmerizing collection of essays, Daniel Tammet answers these and many other questions about the intricacy and profound power of language. Tammet goes back in time to explore the numeric language of his autistic childhood; he looks at the music and patterns that words make, and how languages evolve and...

11) Flirting with French: how a language charmed me, seduced me & nearly broke my heart

Author

Alexander, William

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

“A delightful and courageous tale and a romping good read. Voila!” —Mark Greenside, author of I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do)
William Alexander is more than a Francophile. He wants to be French. There’s one small obstacle though: he doesn’t speak la langue française. In Flirting with French, Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves.

...

12) French Lessons: A Novel

Author

Sussman, Ellen

Formats:

eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

A single day in Paris changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning about language, love, and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways.
Josie, Riley, and Jeremy have come to the City of Light for different reasons: Josie, a young high school teacher, arrives in hopes of healing a broken heart. Riley, a spirited but lonely expat housewife, struggles to feel connected to her husband...

13) Lexicon: a novel

Author

Barry, Max

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

Emily Ruff belongs to a secretive, influential organization whose "poets" can break down individuals by psychographic markers in order to take control of their thoughts. Then she makes a catastrophic mistake and falls in love with Wil Jamieson who holds the key to a secret war between rival factions of "poets." In order to survive, Wil must journey to the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, as the world crashes toward a Tower of Babel...

14) The liar's dictionary: a novel

Author

Williams, Eley

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Click to view

"Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary - violating and subverting the dictionary's authority - in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their...

15) The lover's dictionary

Author

Levithan, David

16) Making a point: the Persnickety story of English punctuation

Author

Crystal, David

Description

Click to view

"The triumphant concluding volume in David Crystal's classic trilogy on the English language combines the first history of English punctuation with a complete guide on how to use it. Behind every punctuation mark lies a thousand stories. The punctuation of English, marked with occasional rationality, is founded on arbitrariness and littered with oddities. For a system of a few dozen marks it generates a disproportionate degree of uncertainty and passion,...

17) The mother tongue: English & how it got that way

Author

Bryson, Bill

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

"Vastly informative and vastly entertaining...A scholarly and fascinating book." —Los Angeles Times

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language.

From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the

...

18) mother tongue my familys globe trotting quest to d

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

19) Our magnificent bastard tongue the untold history of English

Author

McWhorter, John H

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar
Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of “I read a catalog”? Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into...

20) The professor and the madman: a tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English dictionary

Author

Winchester, Simon

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

Click to view

Looks at the making of the Oxford English dictionary.