Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar

by Jenny Baranick

Grammar has finally let its hair down! Unlike uptight grammar books that overwhelm us with every single grammar rule, Kiss My Asterisk is like a it’s fun, flirty, and covers only the most important bits. Its lessons, which are 100 percent free of complicated grammar jargon, have been carefully selected to include today’s most common, noticeable errors-the ones that confuse our readers or make them wonder if we are, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader. What is the proper use of an apostrophe? When should an ellipsis be used instead of an em dash? Why do we capitalize President Obama but not “the president”? And why is that question mark placed outside of the end quote?Author Jenny Baranick is an English professor whose students can’t believe she’s actually that into grammar. Upon experiencing the joys of grammar at an early age, raising grammar awareness became Jenny’s raison d’être. By spreading her remarkably user-friendly and hilarious approach to grammar, she hopes everyone will experience the satisfaction of a properly placed comma, a precisely used semicolon, and a correctly deployed en dash.Kiss My Asterisk shows grammar as it’s never been seen uncomplicated, laugh-out-loud funny, and, dare we say, a little risqué.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Reference, Humor, Language, Ebooks

178 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 4, 2014

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little guide to several basic errors that many people make in terms of punctuation is pretty good. It is fun, funny, and not superior. If you want to brush up on grammar, check it out.

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read various books on grammar, I found the information here fairly basic. BUT, it's still useful for someone who needs a quick refresher, or is learning the language, provided they don't mind an irreverent, colloquial approach to the material.

[Angela Blount · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Spell check and grammar check are like vodka: they are definitely helpful but shouldn’t be solely relied on to solve our problems.”

The majority of the book focuses on the much-needed basics: identifying commonly made grammar and punctuation-related errors, tips and examples for telling certain words and uses apart, and slaying the most common grammar myths.

"Possession is tricky. It brings up issues of jealousy, codependence, self-esteem, and incorrect apostrophe placement. Dr. Phil can help you with the psychological stuff, but I can provide you with some valuable insight into how to use apostrophes to show possession:"

I think I was expecting more sassiness, but most of what I got were a steady stream of tongue-in-cheek sexual references. (Some analogies were more effective than others.) It was snicker-worthy at times, and I appreciated the consistent irreverence—even if it did grow a bit tiresome as the book chugged along. One can’t say it didn’t stick to its underlying sardonic tone and bawdy toe-the-line humor.

On the downsides…

-The later chapters on email etiquette and formatting for academic papers, letters, and resumes felt a bit out of place. While the examples of student emails to the author are amusingly disheartening, to be sure, it’s also fairly divergent from the rest of the punctuation-focused material. The resume section even more so. I’m sure this would be helpful for young adults orienting themselves to the professional world, but for me it felt like a piece of a business class slapped on as a sort of unwieldy bookend.

-It appeared the author isn't aware that the word 'affect' can be used as a noun. (And indeed, frequently is in the medical and psych realms--as it refers to assessing a patient's facial expression and demeanor.) While this isn’t a huge issue, it did bring her expertise somewhat into question for me. I’m not confident enough in my grammatical knowledge to feel assured this was the only oversight.



-The celebrity references used often felt dated, though the book is just a few years old. (i.e. George Clooney’s love life, rumors regarding Richard Gere’s colon, and Paris Hilton’s narrow range of literary preferences... aren’t likely to stand the test of time.)

I suspect I wasn’t so much the target audience for this book. Though, I think it’s a good bet as a gift for college freshmen who are striving build better writing habits whilst endeavoring not to embarrass themselves.

Favorite Quotes:

*"Marriage is great. You no longer have to agonize over finding a date for weddings. You get tax breaks. And assuming everyone sticks to their vows, you don't have to worry about contracting herpes."

* "I don't agree with Freud's theory about women having penis envy. Don't get me wrong, gentlemen; your penises are great. I'm just not personally interested in possessing one myself. To be honest, the last thing I need is to worry about the size of another one of my body parts."

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, confession time. First of all, I think my grammar and spelling are okay, maybe even pretty good. (Actually, I don’t want to boast, but my spelling is good, due to lots and lots of childhood practice. But just in case I’m sounding too pleased with myself, I’ll admit right now that I’m rubbish at science and maths.) Anyway, I digress. My confession is that I find when it comes to grammar, I tend to know what’s right and what’s wrong, but sometimes I don’t exactly know why something is right or wrong.

Kiss My Asterisk is described on the cover as ‘A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar’ and that sums it up pretty well. Baranick is an English Professor, who teaches classes on grammar, and therefore she knows what she’s talking about, and she knows how to make it interesting. There are 17 bite-size chapters, with titles such as ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bars: En Dashes, Em Dashes and Hyphens’, ‘Avoid Premature Ejaculation: Email Etiquette’ and ‘Missed Periods: Run-On Sentences’. Each chapter is clearly explained and contains plenty of funny examples of when to use/not use certain punctuation, etc.. There are also exercises at the end of each chapter (don’t worry, they’re only very quick; it doesn’t feel like homework).

Baranick is very engaging and witty, and even if you don’t always need the advice she’s giving, it’s still fun to read. I think this book would be ideal to keep nearby if you do a lot of writing, and ever have questions about grammar. Definitely recommended.

[Starfire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. All in all, I found this a disappointment, and gave up about halfway through.

While the humour did make me grin in a couple of places, there were far more where it made me feel uncomfortable. As I mentioned in the progress comments, in more than one place, it basically made me think of the the bitchy, clique-y highschool "let's shame women who actually enjoy having sex" sniping.

Plus, I'm not entirely convinced by the author's description of how to use semicolons: she uses them to join two sentences together without a conjunction, which is something I'd only do either with a full colon or with a conjunction (maybe using a semi is an American thing?)

As for her assertion that "affect is always a verb and effect is always a noun"? Nope, nope, nope, nope. I grant you, both are more commonly used in those ways in everyday language. But you can ABSOLUTELY effect a change, and psychologists will regularly talk about having a closed or open affect (referring to facial expression and body language).

And at that point, I just gave up because the book was due back at the library - and really, no, I just wasn't enjoying it.

So yes. All in all, I felt as though this just didn't live up to its potential. Which is sad, because there was a LOT of potential in there.

Ah well. Next...

[david · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too basic for a high school graduate-including a truant, like me. Maybe be better for an ESL student.

[Terris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute! She knows how to make learning about punctuation and grammar interesting! ;)

[Jeanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoy reading about how to write well, but I wasn't the target audience for Kiss My Asterisk. Several things made this book unpalatable:

(a) Kiss My Asterisk starts with material I'm really not interested in (i.e., choosing among homophones), then moved to the more interesting stuff (more interesting to me) at the end. Put the homophone and word usage in an appendix at the end of the book.

(b) Jenny Baranick frequently uses sexual humor to illustrate grammatical issues (I should have known based on the title).

If I could change one thing about myself, what would it be? Well, that’s an interesting question. I could certainly go for some longer legs. Increasing a cup-size would be nice. I’ve always kind of wanted green eyes and longer eyelashes and a flawless complexion and . . . (Kindle 1034)

I'm not sure who Baranick's target audience is. Would her language be appropriate with high school students? College students? Maybe those working on their GED?

(c) Baranick talks a lot about her husband – always positively – but in a way that reminds me of a former professor who talked about his wife all of the time – until he stopped. (They had divorced.) That may be a completely inappropriate connection, but I expect that if I Googled her, I would learn of her divorce.

(d) Baranick also fairly frequently writes in disrespectful ways about her students and colleagues. I wouldn't want her writing about me as she writes about others, and it further irritated me.

I wanted to like Kiss My Asterisk but couldn't get past the above. I read 42% and decided that life is to short to read books that annoy, even when learning things in the process.

[Bookjazzer2010 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, my! The forced humor was wasted on me. Perhaps some readers will appreciate the non-stop references to trashy media stars and behavior. There were about four grammatical rules that were useful and new to me.

[Cinder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, this book is soooo bad and the only reason I forced myself to finish it is because I am VERY VERY BEHIND on my book challenge (like 38 books behind). Baranick is NOT FUNNY and is that person you meet who tries really hard to be funny, but falls flat every time. I am concerned that she is a professor due to her obsession with making an entire, unrelated book, all about sex. If she had tried to make a few jokes and some were slightly raunchy I'd say cool and maybe laugh; this is a whole different level. Maybe it's the counselor in me who is concerned with what really hides behind a joke or maybe because she was just reaching too hard to be funny that she entered the completely inappropriate, unhealthy realm of perverse. It just didn't sit well with me and I will remain concerned that she is allowed to teach students.

There were some good refreshers in this book if you skim past the BS fluff (which by the way made this crap about 100 pages longer than it needed to be). I believe I'm a decent writer and my friends and family refer to me as the grammar police at times - though sometimes I get lazy with my writing like I am right now. However, there were mistakes in this book. Affect is NOT only a verb and effect is NOT only a noun. C'mon now. Affect is a psychological/counseling concept having to do with someone's emotional state or feelings. Effect is related to causing something to occur; the verb affect has more to do with influence. The fact Baranick didn't note this causes me to doubt her credibility with some of the other "rules" she discusses. Another part that makes no sense: "The word supposed is like another word that commitment-phobes hate: should. If you admit that you’re supposed to do something, then you’ve acknowledged that you should be doing it. Therefore, a good way to remember to add the d in supposed is to remember that should also ends in a d." The word COULD also ends with D and COULD refers to Suppose which is also discussed during this part. Her helpful hint is senseless. I can go on but I need to find something else to read ASAP to rid my brain of this junk.

[Erikka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short and sweet guide to grammar with an irreverent twist. I actually liked a lot of her explanations and tips. There are several things my students do consistently wrong that I'm going to explain with her methods. I did feel that in some chapters, the humor got old (namely the Paris Hilton chapter), and we all have been made aware in this more gender-accepting world that they/them are absolutely singular pronouns. Billy Shakes himself used they singularly. Otherwise, this was fun and I like Baranick's style.

[Elise Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already finished and posted my syllabus on Moodle, but I think I’m going to have to find a way to sneak in a chapter from this...

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Extracts: Kindle: Kiss My Asterix
Kiss My Asterisk: A Feisty Guide to Punctuation and Grammar
Baranick, Jenny
Well this book certainly lives up to its subtitle: “A feisty guide to punctuation and grammar”. I guess it’s really written for late-teenage students....hence the frequent “feisty” references. Did it annoy me? Hmm. Generally no!....And I think she cleverly incorporates this racy style to make her message have more impact. Overall, I think it works.
Did I learn much that was new to me? No. Though I did make a few extracts of some paragraphs, below, which were interesting or raised issues that I wasn’t aware of. ....Or, in some case, just because it appealed to me.
I’ve never been quite sure about ending sentences in a preposition. So nice to have Jenny’s ok on this. And a couple of good suggestions there: don’t use the number 0 in your email address and commas and periods come before the inverted commas in America but not in the UK. (Note to Jenny: it’s not Great Britain...it’s the UK). Reminds me of when I was writing a book for the World Trade Organisation and I had a Canadian Editor , with an American Publications manager and the UN guidelines were basically based on the UK. Sometimes I even had a win because I’ve been raised more on the UK system than the American. (But they were really great to work with).
Overall, I liked the book...feisty comments and all. I give it five stars. And I’ve included a few extracts below ans memory jotters to myself ..or just because they appealed to me. (I even sent the quote about Costa Rica to a friend of mine who has just returned from an (older) girl’s trip to Costa Rica...she loved it).

Chapter 8: Goldilocks and the Three Bars: En Dashes, Em Dashes, and Hyphens
In order to create the em dash, we type the minus sign twice on our keyboard, and then it magically merges together......There is not an all-encompassing rule that dictates when to hyphenate words. The general consensus is that if we want to know if a word is hyphenated we should check the dictionary. However, it is also the general consensus that words should be hyphenated when the hyphen helps clarify meaning.
Goldilocks was not a dirty-blonde. Goldilocks was not a dirty blonde. The first sentence means that her hair color was not dirty-blonde. The second sentence means she was not a blonde-haired girl in need of a bath.
The closest we can get to set hyphen rules are that the prefixes ex, self, and all always require hyphens while adverbs ending in ly never do:
Chapter 10: Mary Ann or Ginger: Punctuation with Quotation Marks
Unlike the question mark and exclamation point, the comma and the period always sit inside the quotation marks: The Skipper called Gilligan his “little buddy,” but he made him do all the dirty work.
Had the Minnow shipwrecked on the British Isle instead of Gilligan’s Isle, however, the castaways would have been expected to place the period and comma outside the quotation marks because that’s how they do it in Great Britain.
Chapter 11: That’s Hot: Capitalization
But what really irks me about large corporations is that they are responsible for the capitalization crisis that is currently plaguing our nation. Apple Inc. is the main culprit. Their iPods, iPhones, and iPads are so dang cool that to be just like them much of the nation has stopped capitalizing the word I.
Chapter 12: Freudian Slip: Using You
When you experience a herpes flare-up, it’s important to refrain from sexual activity. [A student writing in an essay]. Well, um, this is awkward. My student is insinuating that I have herpes. That’s a bit inappropriate, don’t you think? Let me just put a little minus sign after that letter grade.
This doesn’t mean that we should never use you in our writing; it just means that we should use it wisely. It’s entirely appropriate to use you when directly addressing our readers. For example, it’s common to use you when writing a how-to manual, a guidebook, or a recipe because we are actually telling our readers what to do.
Basically, using you in our writing creates an intimacy with our readers. Therefore, before we use it, we really need to think about whether or not we want to connect with our readers on that level.
Chapter 14: Keepin’ It Real: Grammar Myth Busting
One of these Latin lovers was an eighteenth-century English clergyman named Robert Lowth. His understanding of grammar was based largely on the study of Latin, which would have been fine except for the fact that he decided to carpe diem and write a largely influential English grammar book based on Latin rules. One such rule he propagated was that we must never end a sentence with a preposition. A preposition is a word that typically indicates time or space. Some that we commonly use to end sentences are at, for, with, from, in, and on. This is a sentence that ends in a preposition: I left my door unlocked so Don Juan could sneak in.
Latin Lovers might suggest that we rewrite it like this: I left my door unlocked so in Don Juan could sneak. I don’t know about you, but if someone said that to me, I’d kind of want to punch them in their pretentious little mouth.
Not only can rearranging our sentences to avoid ending them in prepositions sound pretentious, it’s also unnecessary. Grammar experts agree that it’s perfectly acceptable to end sentences in prepositions.
Chapter 15: Avoid Premature Ejaculation: Email Etiquette
To avoid the embarrassment and/ or disappointment that may result from prematurely ejaculating our emails, I recommend that the very last thing we do when writing an email is type in our email recipient’s email address. I am going to write that in bold again: the very last thing we do when writing an email is type in our email recipient’s email address. This technique alone has been proven to cure 80 percent of all cases of premature email ejaculation.
Before we type in the email recipient’s email address, we must make sure everything is perfect.....We have to PROOFREAD our emails.
As soon as I graduated from college, off I flitted to Costa Rica for some postcollege self-discovery, thinking I was pretty exceptional for being so free-spirited. It turned out I was more the rule than the exception: the country was full of young women from all over the world in their early twenties with a similar agenda. And, it turned out I wasn’t even close to being the most free-spirited. I recall a lovely Norwegian girl who was so free-spirited she bore a beautiful Costa Rican/ Norwegian baby girl.
Don’t Use Your Porn Name Do you know how to find your porn name? You combine the name of your first pet and the name of your first street. My porn name is actually perfect for an English major; it’s Max Beth. Apparently, in the porn world I’ve got a kinky Shakespearean thing going on.
If you have to add a number to your name in your email address (e.g., janesmith456@ server.com), I recommend trying not to include a zero in the number. It’s hard to differentiate the number 0 from the letter O, especially when you jot it down by hand.
I receive emails from people trying to sell me Viagra every day; it’s as though they think I am married to Hugh Hefner. I donated to Greenpeace once, and now they email me so often I wonder where they find the time to save the whales. Every day, I am emailed credit card offers, offers of friendship from people, and offers of sharing in the fortune of a Nigerian prince. Because of this daily influx of email, it’s so important that my students and colleagues give their email a good title in the subject header—to differentiate it from all the crap.
For me, the perfect email title is like the perfect first date outfit. It reveals just enough without giving too much away. The perfect email subject title states the main purpose of the email in a few words.
We sarcastic folk are often sorely misunderstood. Sometimes we are just trying to be funny, but it gets misconstrued as serious, and we look like big jerks. At least in face-to-face conversation, it’s easier to grasp the tone of a conversation; in writing we don’t have the other person’s tone of voice or facial expressions to use as clues. Consequently, some serious misunderstandings can occur.
You have to understand that when we pick up a tabloid, that’s not the kind of information we’re interested in. We only want to know: If you are cheating on your wife If your wife is cheating on you How much plastic surgery you and your wife have had
You are about to encounter some real emails from students to their English teacher (me), the teacher who really, really cares about punctuation and grammar. Students sending emails like this to an English teacher seems about as appropriate as auditioning for American Idol while suffering from laryngitis.
Chapter 16: Looks Matter: Formatting Academic Papers, Letters, and Résumés
We go around saying things like “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover” and “true beauty is on the inside,” but let’s cut the crap, shall we? There’s a billion-dollar industry that thrives because the hint of a wrinkle is so hideous that we inject poison into our bodies. If that doesn’t prove that we’re superficial, how about the fact that Leonardo diCaprio keeps dating models and not English teachers.
I’ll admit it. I’m totally superficial. When I was in high school, I plastered my wall with pictures of Johnny Depp, not Bill Gates. I wear high heels to make my legs appear longer even though I’m sure sneakers are better for my feet. Hell, I even judge my students based on appearance.
Yes, that’s right; I am an egotistical, tyrannical control-freak. But, I am not the only one. Other egotistical, tyrannical control-freaks include your prospective employers, your bosses, and your potential investors, so when constructing your résumés and business proposals, make sure that they’re nice and neat. Check out one of the various websites or guidebooks regarding proper formatting. Make sure all your bullet points line up perfectly. Make sure your font size is consistent. Make sure your spacing is uniform. Don’t bold and italicize randomly.
And then once you work your way up to CEO or own your own company, you can impose your own tyrannical requirements on others.
Chapter 17: Textual Healing: Proofreading
That’s why when my relationship between me and my writing gets a bit stagnant I always have someone else proofread my work......You see, when we proofread our own writing, it’s difficult to catch the errors.......It’s a good idea to take a nice long rest in between writing and proofreading. If we try to proofread immediately after we complete our writing, our proofreading will most likely be a bit flaccid.
Since your written document can’t actually talk to you, why don’t you read it out loud? By hearing the words out loud, you might discover important qualities about your writing that you never noticed before—like the fact that it contains some run-on sentences.
Another technique:.....start with the last sentence and end with the first.
Click return after every sentence until your entire document is broken down into lines of stand-alone sentences; then proofread each sentence individually.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose I owed it to myself to follow a book on math wrapped in comedic trappings with a book on grammar ...wrapped in the comedic trappings. Except ... not accept...one of the many points illustrated in this charming little book...Ms. Baranick is funnier. I wonder if her classes are as fun as her writing?

I learned one thing...a new acronym for conjunctions (not that I needed one): FANBOYS; For And Nor But Or Yet So. Cool, though I'm wondering if as memorable as the "first Polish Astronaut" I learned in my school: Anorbut Fornoryetski (the 'ski"replacing "so" made it more fun, and as we had a large Polish constituency in our rather small town, it wasn't seen as demeaning.)

Good stuff.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

She's indeed feisty, and she's funny, and she sure knows her grammar. This is a cute and fun way to brush up on some of the basic rules of grammar. The "themes" for each chapter are often quite funny, and so are the examples and exercises. I learned that I'm a comma abuser, especially when it comes to "comma splice". Sigh.

[Mary Northrup · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a grammar nerd: I love diagramming sentences, discussing the Oxford comma, and memorizing spelling rules. So I love books about punctuation and grammar, especially humorous ones. This one is hilarious!

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Needlessly crass. "Feisty" is not the same thing as vulgar.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's unusual for a book to be as amusing as it is informative. If you have ever struggled with the intricacies of English grammar this book is a great guide through the maze.

[Dola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is hilarious! I learned about grammer and punctuation while laughing my head off. I highly recommend this book!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative, witty, and delightful...

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading this non-fiction book yesterday before bed, and I enjoyed having my grammar lessons given in such a humourous way.

The author is a college English professor who teaches a class on grammar called Writing Skills, and she has written this book to impart those skills to a wider audience. The first chapter is Know Thyself: Spelling, followed by It's Complicated: One Word, Two Words, or Three Words; Quality Control: Words That Don't Make the Grade; Missed Periods: Run-On Sentences; More Than a Feeling: Commas; I Do: Apostrophes; Drumroll, Please: Colons; Goldilocks and the Three Bars: En Dashes, Em Dashes, and Hyphens; The Scarlet Punctuation Mark: The Ellipsis; Mary Ann or Ginger: Punctuation with Quotation Marks;  That's Hot: Capitalization; Freudian Slip: Using You; How Old Do You Think I Am?: Numbers; Keepin' It Real: Grammar Myth Busting; Avoid Premature Ejaculation: Email Etiquette; Looks Matter: Formatting Academic Papers, Letters, and Résumes; and Textual Healing: Proofreading. As can be seen from the chapter headings, the author indeed promises a feisty book; in her sample sentences to illustrate a given point, said sentence could be something like "Here's the premise: She opens a sex shop next door to the boutique on Rodeo Drive that snubbed her" or "Jake Miller, who kisses like he's giving CPR, was the most popular guy in school" or "Brad unfriended Jennifer on Facebook, changed his phone number, and adopted several children with a woman he just met". At the end of each chapter are Exercises: sentences that the reader needs to correct (the Answer Key is at the back of the book for the Exercises). In fact, about the only thing the author does not cover is the asterisk.

I very much enjoyed reading this book, and I will try to remember not to use an excess number of commas in the future in my Book Reviews.

[Stan James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, sassy and innuendo-filled collection of tips on grammar and spelling that stays PG despite references to Richard Gere and gerbils. The book is derived from the blog Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares, a title that pretty clearly sets the tone for the book.

I think my favorite thing in Kiss My Asterisk were the examples of the creative spelling used by some of Baranick's students:

whorable ("I am having a whorable day.")
thoughs ("I love old black and white comedies. Thoughs are the best.")
celeberde ("Have you ever met a famous celeberde?")

While the book on the whole covered familiar territory for me, it did help me to better understand my abuse and misuse of commas, so I consider the purchase as money well-spent. If there are any misplaced commas in this review, don't blame the author. I am not always a fast learner.

My only serious complaint is how abruptly the book ends. I mean, it just stops and you're looking at an answer key for the exercises. It was a bit disappointing. The tone, though consistently cheeky, sometimes misses the mark, but I did find myself chuckling more than a few times. There aren't a lot of books on punctuation out there that can do that.

Overall, recommended, though you might want to read a sample before committing, because if the tone doesn't work for you, the whole book will be fingers-on-a-chalkboard annoying.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tone of the book is playful and clearly oriented towards the freshmen in college who are Baranick's students. Her cultural references are all Gen X and that made the commentary either entirely relatable or somewhat dated. Or both. But her grammar cues are as good as can be, simply designed and easy to understand.

I took it in as though I were in class, reading a paragraph every few days and sitting with the week's lessons before continuing.

I found myself scoffing "who needs this?" when I started reading. And then she pointed out an error I made all the time. For years. (Irregardless. I know.)

And for the life of me, I could ALWAYS use a reminder about the difference between the em and en dashes. I don't know if I will ever get those right, word nerd that I am.

And now I cannot read any piece of writing, email, text or otherwise, without seeing each and every apostrophe error. Thanks, Baranick. =)

[The Bibliotherapist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never thought I'd be reading a grammar book and laughing out loud! Meanwhile, also learning about rules I never really knew. Finally, it's great for my confidence to read about her college students, taking her Writing Skills class, in their native language and being so much worse at it than dyslexic, foreign me! (*Super paranoid I've made a spelling, grammar or comma mistake in this review....*)
Anyway, if you want to learn about English language grammar or simply improve/ensure you're actually doing it right, this is a great book for it - even when she's waffling off-topic to make an on-topic point it isn't boring but entertaining and her examples are childishly, wonderfully immature.

[Noemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I love grammar, and I'm pretty picky about it. My major in college was journalism with a focus in editing, so grammar is a huge deal for me.

I liked how Jenny tried to explain grammar rules in a funny way. Yes, she used a lot of dirty innuendos to explain grammar, but they all made sense, and I don't know how I could have never linked the two before.

She also used a lot of contemporary examples, from celebrities to TV shows, and although I wasn't familiar with all of them (I'm not American), it was easy to understand.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to quickly review his or her grammar without buying a 100$ textbook.

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is NOT a book about grammar or the English language. It's a book of jokes about celebrities, penises, and margaritas--and bad ones at that. If you're looking for an actual grammar guide, avoid this at all costs; there are plenty of great grammar guides out there (and not all of them are dry). Here, the author's treatment of grammar is shallow at best, and incorrect or questionable at worst.
The book is virtually always unbearable. Imagine an episode of Sex and the City turned into a book, made a parody of itself, and cranked to 11. This might literally be the worst book I have ever read; it's surely the biggest waste of time.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feisty indeed--and funny as well

I was looking for a quick, entertaining reference to help remind me of all those pesky little details I've become sloppy about using. I've recently had the need to write a couple professional letters, and upon my proofreading, found that I could benefit from a grammar review. No matter how often one writes, or in which format one writes, good grammar never goes out of style. Grab a snack and a glass of wine, and begin to smile and laugh your way back to better writing.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a quick refresher on punctuation and grammar, but don't want a dry text book full of obscure rules and their exceptions, you will like this. It covers the basics: when to use commas and semi-colons, when to spell out numbers or use numerals, when to capitalize and when not to capitalize, etc. It's called a Feisty Guide because it's full of attitude and innuendo, nothing at all like your prim and proper high school English teacher. It's fun, if a little over the top with the sex talk - not dirty, but not subtle either: high school information, junior high humour.

[Jeff Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this "feisty guide" to grammar. Most books on language usage are incredibly dry, but this one managed to inject some humor and entertainment value while also imparting useful information. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their grammar skills and avoid common mistakes, especially if other grammar books have been a turn off due to their dry presentation.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a line that must be walked when writing an irreverent how-to book. You have to decide how far to go to make the subject fun and engaging without going too far into crass and off putting. I imagine that it isn’t an easy line to walk. And I don’t think I’m up to the challenge. Unfortunately, I think this book went too far more often than it walked the line. But even so, my grammar is stronger, my punctuation is better, and I have no regrets.