With over 80 books in our library, this year we're taking some time every week to highlight one of the books on the Eckhartz bookshelf. This week's book is Grammar Moses by Jim Baumann.
Summary
For 30 years as an editor at the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, Jim Baumann has tried to impart grammar and usage advice to his work groups with a dash of humor. What started out as occasional notes to a few people became a rogue internal memo to the whole newspaper editorial staff. In 2015, he decided to turn it into a weekly column that would be an ongoing conversation with readers – in the Daily Herald as well as the Daily Herald Media Group’s other newspapers in central and southern Illinois. This book is a compilation of Jim’s favorite columns from the past six years as well as some never-before-published internal memos that led up to the column.
“Forget about the traditional ‘grammar police’ approach used in most education. Grammar Moses operates more like a veracious and subversive sit-down comic, causing useful writing lessons to masquerade as entertaining anecdotes. Whether you are a novelist, screenwriter, playwright or pen pal, Grammar Moses works miracles by parting the Read Sea and preventing you from drowning in verbosity.”
“The time is right for a fresh look at grammar, and Jim Baumann takes us on a delightful tour of modern-day dilemmas in usage. He knows exactly how to help us corral our wandering commas, meandering modifiers and catastrophes among apostrophes.”
“As a long-time fan of Jim Baumann’s Grammar Moses newspaper column, and as a skilled fellow author, I am looking forward to the phonological wit and wisdom that he may bring to this very likely excellent book.”
“Clever name, clever idea. Grammar Moses tackles those sticky grammar situations you didn’t know you were stuck in and those questions you were afraid to ask and glad someone else did. Proper grammar is a lost art and it’s so refreshing to see it tackled with civility and not an air of snootiness. I look forward to my Sunday newspaper to see if Jim Baumann can stump me. My comments are mostly ‘Oh yes, students make that same mistake all the time!’ followed by nodding agreement — and sometimes a ‘Wait, is he right?’ followed by a visit to my AP stylebook and grammar books. Teach, Grammar Moses, teach!”
“As a retired university professor living in a small Midwestern town, I constantly seek intellectual stimulation. I find that when reading Jim Baumann’s articles published in our county newspaper. Mr. Baumann has a knack for mixing intellectual thought with humor.”
“Not even an English teacher is infallible! Enter Grammar Moses to keep each of us current with endless grammar rules: your and you’re; their, there or they’re; to, too, two. What about farther or further? Adverbial nouns? Enter Jim Baumann, who with humor and insight enables us to ‘write right.’”
