Maybe it’s your dorky cousin who sits in the corner reading a book instead of talking to family all through the holidays. Perhaps it’s the co-worker who’s always correcting the grammar in your e-mails. Hell, maybe it’s just your dad, who can’t get enough of Will Shortz and that ridiculous mustache of his on NPR’s Weekend Edition.
For all these folks and more, this week we bring you official Angry Grammarian gift suggestions for the word nerd on your list.
2007 saw a bit of a slowdown in grammar books, as we all came down off our three-year Eats, Shoots & Leaves bender. The post-Trussian empire we’ve entered was well-chronicled in David Crystal’s The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left, which both chides those (ahem) riding on Lynne Truss’ coattails and runs a few coattail laps itself. Also excellent this year was Rotten English, an anthology of vernacular English writing from around the world, edited by Dohra Ahmad. Finally, also seen in this space, When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda and Filthy Shakespeare by Pauline Kiernan. Both are really funny; the latter also happens to be awesomely dirty.
“Clever” T-shirts are super-annoying (hello, Urban Outfitters!), but English majors will make an exception for the “Prose before Hos” shirt, adorned with a bust of the Bard. It’s available at www.bustedtees.com, along with the borderline-obnoxious-but-still-acceptable “YOUR RETARDED” shirt—good only for catching pompous grammar-correctors in the act.
Looking for something musical? Cheetah vs. Helicopter, this year’s release from the band Grammar Debate! (www.myspace.com/grammardebate), is obviously the only way to go.
Franklin (www.franklin.com) has released a hand-sized electronic Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, which is the Angry Grammarian’s desk dictionary of choice. The good news: They’ve packed in nine different books, including a dictionary of quotations, dictionary of English usage, biographical dictionary and five-language translator. The bad news: On the “speak this word” function, they’ve disabled all the naughty words that you (or at least I) naturally want to type in as soon as it’s out of the box.
Hear lots more grammar gift guides in this week’s Angry Grammarian podcast. Subscribe free at www.theangrygrammarian.com.