The Revenge of Anguished English: More Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language

This is a gut wrenching (in the sense that my stomach ached from laughter after reading it) collection of grammatical errors, linguistic bloopers, slip ups, faux pas, mixed metaphors, mis-translations, Freudian slips, malapropisms and other gaffes and misunderstandings from the schoolroom, the courts, political speeches, the doctor's office, warning labels and instructions, advertisements, church bulletins, headlines, and worst of all, the media, who as the author points out, are professionals and should know better.

Here are some samples:
The Court: The charge here is the theft of frozen chickens. Are you the defendant?
Defendant: No sir, I'm the guy who stole the chickens.
From students' test papers: All Gaul is quartered unto three halves.
Christopher Columbus discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic on the Nina, the Pintacolada and the Santa Fe.
Someone who runs for an office he already holds is called an incompetent.
The four gospels were written by John, Paul, George and that other guy.
Parent's note to teacher: Please excuse Tom for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.
From a church bulletin: We are sorry to announce that Mr Albert Brown has been quite unwell, owing to his recent death and is taking a short holiday to recover.

My personal favourite is the correction of an error of high tide times published in an Australian coastal town newspaper, but you'll have to read the book to get the joke.

If you have not yet encountered the humorous works of Richard Lederer, you don't know what you've been missing. If you have read his earlier books, then this is more of the same insane hilarity. In either case, waste no time getting your hands on this book and prepare for an assault on your funny-bone.

Richard Lederer has broken all records with his latest book.

It is a big laugh from beginning to end and I recommend it highly to anyone who needs the cobwebs of melancholy and depression driven away in one fell swoop.

This book is a collection of gaffes, puns (mostly unintentional), unfortunate typos, syntactical snafus, kids' use of language, and translational traps. Some of the examples are riotously funny; others are just so-so. Sometimes the number of examples overwhelms the brain's ability to appreciate them. The introductions by Lederer before each chapter are cleverly written, but sometimes too much so. (Example: "Here's a sampling of English terrors and tinglish errors, the blood and thunder and thud and blunder...") Ugh.

Finally, if you're going to make fun of English gaffes you find elsewhere, you'd better have a cadre of editors to make sure none of your prose contains errors. This sentence, written by Lederer, poked me right in the eye: "It is sometimes said that if something is perfectly true, then it's exact opposite must also be perfectly true." Apostrophe abuse!

Still, it was a very funny book, especially for a word nerd such as myself. I definitely intend to look for Lederer's earlier works. I love this stuff!

The AMERICAN HERITAGE Dictionary describes 'revenge' as "to inflict punishment for injury or insult." MERRIAM-WEBSTER Dictionary calls it "an opportunity for getting satisfaction. 'Anguish" in A.H. is "torment;" in MW, it is "full of torment."

I didn't appreciate the puns and some of the language: Edgar Allen Poe's single-effect theory is that everything in the story contributes to one main idea and the story should be short enough to be "read in one (word banned)." To me, this is not funny. Poe is one of my favorite writers and should not be demeaned in such a fashion.

Richard Lederer is the author of fifteen other books about English and has a column, "Looking at Language" in newspapers and magazines nationwide. Today's column by our local grammar guru suggests everyone use redundancies: "refer back," 'Past history,' and "absolute necessity."

He is not an expert on English in spite of what that total may presume; puns is his specialty. He divides this book into five sections.

Unfortunately, none of the local papers carry a column, "Looking at Language," by Richard Lederer . . . it is something that I'd definitely want to read--especially after enjoying his
very funny book, THE REVENGE OF ANGUISHED ENGLISH.

In it, he takes actual misuses of the English language and presents them in a series of short chapters that had me laughing from the very first page . . . I never realized that there were so many fluffs and flubs, goofs and gaffes, blunders, botches, boo-boos, and bloopers that are actually run as the gospel, seemingly on a daily basis.

They have been issued by students, run in church bulletins, appeared on frozen food packages, and run in newspapers as headlines.

The tough part in writing this review was to choose just a few examples that I could share, in that there were so many . . . among them:

* On the JOEY BISHOP SHOW, Joey asked Sen. Barry Goldwater if he would like to be on the show twice a week. The senator answered, "I'd much rather watch you in bed with my wife."

* Attending a wedding for the first time, a little girl whispered to her mother, "Why is the bride dressed in white?"

"Because white is the color of happiness, and today is the happiest day of her life."

The child thought about this for a moment, then said, "So why is the groom wearing black?"

* [from the Excuses Hall of Fame]
My son is under the doctor's care. Please execute him.
Please excuse Mary for being absent. She was sick, and I had her shot.
Please excuse Jimmy for being. If was his father's fault.
Please excuse Tom for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea,
and his boots leak.
Maryann was absent December 11-16 because she had a fever,
sore throat, headache, and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick--fever and sore throat--and her brother had a low-grade fever and ached all over. I wasn't the best either--sore throat and fever. There must be the flu going around school. Her father even got hot last night.

[court Q-and-A]
Q: Where do you live?
A: 2442 Oseawotamire Street
Q: How do you spell that street?
A: S-T-R-E-E-T

* In one edition of today's food section, an inaccurate number of jalapeno peppers was given for Jeanette Crowley's southwestern chicken salad recipe. The Recipe should call for 2, not 21, jalapeno peppers.

* Lost dog-mixed breed, shaggy, left front leg amputated, missing top of right ear, partially blind, tail was broken and healed crooked, some teeth gone, scars on head and back, has been castrated. Answers to name of Lucky

* Spoken by a Los Angeles radio DJ shortly after the 1990 earthquake:
The telephone company is urging people to please not use the telephone unless it is absolutely necessary in order to keep the lines open for emergency personnel. We'll be right back after this break to give away a pair of Phil Collins concert tickets to caller number 95.

I'm still laughing at these so much that I'm now going to get hold of Lederer's first book on the same topic, ANGUISHED ENGLISH.