That Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras is not a book about obscene hand gestures from around the world. No, this is about commonly misused words and phrases in American English. The grammar police is at it again! (See what I did there?) Actually, I’m fine with the grammar police. If you ask me (even if you do not ask me), I think English could stand some policing. Too many words have multiple meanings, spellings, and pronunciations. Who can keep track of it all? No wonder grammar stinks in this country.
English is a warm to hot mess in need of cleaning up. But, where to start? Well, we could start by using our warm to hot mess of words correctly. And so, we have That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means. This book is way handy for brushing up on words that get goofed up a lot. Drawing from personal experience, being able to use correct English is a great shortcut to sounding well-educated for those of us who are not.
And, if you read and absorb and use all the grammatical goodness offered up in this fine book, and sprinkle into your speech a few pithy, descriptive profanities and colloquialisms here and there to avoid sounding like a snooty British butler, people will think you are a gosh-darn grammar genius, and an all-around smartypants.
- Norm
