Includes index.

Reprint. Originally published: c2010.

Part 1 Words 7 -- 1 Read dictionaries for fun and learning 9 -- 2 Avoid speed bumps caused by misspellings 14 -- 3 Adopt a favorite letter of the alphabet 18 -- 4 Honor the smallest distinctions even between a and the 21 -- 5 Consult a thesaurus to remind yourself of words you already know 27 -- 6 Take a class on how to cross-dress the parts of speech 31 -- 7 Enjoy, rather than fear, words that sound alike 35 -- 8 Learn seven ways to invent words 40 -- 9 Become your own lexicographer 45 -- 10 Take advantage of the short-word economy of English 49 -- 11 Learn when and how to enrich your prose with foreign words 55 -- Part 2 Points 61 -- 12 Use the period to determine emphasis and space 63 -- 13 Advocate use of the serial comma 68 -- 14 Use the semicolon as a "swinging gate" 72 -- 15 Embrace the three amigos: colon, dash, and parentheses 77 -- 16 Let your ear help govern the possessive apostrophe 82 -- 17 Take advantage of the versatility of quotation marks 85 -- 18 Use the question mark to generate reader curiosity and narrative energy 89 -- 19 Reclaim the exclamation point 94 -- 20 Master the elliptical art of leaving things out 98 -- 21 Reach into the "upper case" to unleash the power of names 103 -- 22 Vary your use of punctuation to create special effects 108 -- Part 3 Stamdards 111 -- 23 Learn to lie or lay, as well as the principles behind the distinction 113 -- 24 Avoid the "trap" of subject-verb disagreement 117 -- 25 Render gender equality with a smooth style 121 -- 26 Place modifiers where they belong 128 -- 27 Help the reader learn what is "essential" and "nonessential." 131 -- 28 Avoid case mistakes and "hypergrammar." 135 -- 29 Be certain about the uncertain subjunctive and other "moody" subjects 138 -- 30 Identify all sources of ambiguity and confusion 143 -- 31 Show what is literal and what is figurative 148 -- Part 4 Meaning 153 -- 32 Join subjects and verbs, or separate them for effect 155 -- 33 Use active and passive verbs in combination and with a purpose 162 -- 34 Befriend the lively verb to be 168 -- 35 Switch tenses, but only for strategic reasons 173 -- 36 Politely ignore the language crotchets of others 179 -- 37 Learn the five forms of well-crafted sentences 183 -- 38 Make sentence fragments work for you and the reader 187 -- 39 Use the complex sentence to connect unequal ideas 193 -- 40 Learn how expert writers break the rules in run-on sentences 197 -- Part 5 Purpose 203 -- 41 Master the uses of nonstandard English 205 -- 42 Add a pinch of dialect for flavor 209 -- 43 Tame taboo language to suit your purposes 215 -- 44 Unleash your associative imagination 220 -- 45 Play with sounds, natural and literary 226 -- 46 Master the distinction between denotation and connotation 231 -- 47 Measure the distance between concrete and abstract language 238 -- 48 Harness the power of particularity 244 -- 49 Have fun with initials and acronyms, but avoid "capital" offenses 251 -- 50 Master the grammar of new forms of writing 256.