When was the last time you reviewed your beliefs about writing? Took a look at the language "rules" with all their exceptions? Tried to discover your own writing style? Probably never! We all sopped up grammar rules in school as if they were manna handed down from on high. And now, as grownups, you see more clearly that those were just "ideas of rules" that you were made to learn, nothing cast in stone or made official.At last, comes an official guide to American-English - as unique as the country that uses it. No hard-and-fast rules to learn, since you are dealing with a language comprised of a variety of other languages. American-English is like no other for the simple reason it lacks a set of rules we can all agree on. So why try!What makes this book official is the use of guidelines - not rules - on which you the writer can learn your own options, make your own decisions, and choose the ones that best fit your style of writing. And that doesn't include the styles set by creators of corporate style manuals that reflect only how employees of that corporation are to write.American-English reviews the parts of speech by emphasizing the way those words function and how to choose words that readers will understand.You'll also review the strange curly cues, dots, and lines that form punctuation - to provide readers with the sound of your written voice. And finally, you'll find guidelines to put it all together, including help in learning ways to improve word usage, sentence structure, paragraph patterns, spelling, the use of numbers, and avoiding biased language (PC means "polite and courteous" here). You'll find a succinct list of Grammar Glitches and a full index to guide your special-needs search.
About the Author: Val Dumond is an admitted word enthusiast, freak, buff, fan, aficionada, devotee, fanatic - oh all right - an addict. She can't stop putting words together and finding new ways to use them. In this book she offers some of her conclusions, as well as most of the choices that make up Val's Style Manual. Her lifetime of writing professionally includes years as a journalist, intermittent years writing advertising copy, and enumerable years jotting down ideas, putting them together to fashion short stories and a couple dozen books. She currently manages Muddy Puddle Press, an independent publisher. But it hasn't all been writing. She reared two fantastic children, raised funds for her favorite nonprofits, earned a couple of academic degrees, met two Presidents, traveled up the Nile River, spent two weeks on a Greek island, even stopped in London to hear Big Ben, had cocktails with the queen in the Netherlands, sipped wine in Spain and France, and oh-so-much-more! She continues to write stories and novels, edit manuscripts, and help good writers get published. She wants desperately to convince Americans to accept this unique form of grammar freedom that uses guidelines rather than rules. She does not suggest making mandatory the use of English-only - not in the good old land of the free: the United States of America. After all, it's the Polish, German, Baltic, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Russian, Indian, and Native American languages (and all their cousins and offspring) that gave us American-English!