Ellen Jovin calls herself a “roving grammarian.” She’s earned the title.
A longtime writing and grammar teacher, she concocted an idea in 2018: place a table in public, hang a “Grammar Table” sign and wait.
She started outside a subway stop in New York City, where she lives. She then headed to other states, setting up near stores and libraries, anywhere she’s welcomed. She’s visited 47 states.
And did people ever come. With questions and remonstrances and requests to settle arguments.
Jovin has talked to, well, gobs of people. About grammar, word-use hiccups, punctuation, prepositions, pronunciation, pronouns, participles, contractions and more.
Now she’s turned her experiences into a book, “Rebel with a Clause,” out July 19.
It’s a grammar book. But readers also meet dozens of people who visited Jovin’s table, and they eavesdrop as she coaches and affirms and sometimes acknowledges multiple right answers.
So, yes, a grammar book. But the people Jovin met keep it light.
Grammar squabbles, she writes, are about grammar, not our divisive politics.
Relax.
Relax!
“We all poop,” she adds, “and we all punctuate.”
Grammar Table is on Twitter
Visit @GrammarTable. Multiple daily Twitter polls on serious and silly grammar, word-use, punctuation and pronunciation topics.
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