The Mountain Man's Field Guide to Grammar: A Fearless Adventure in Grammar, Style, and Usage

370 Pages·2006·1.12 MB·English

by  Gary Spina

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M M ’
TOHEUNTAIN AN S
FIELD GUIDE
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H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
M M ’
TOHEU N TA I N A N S
FIELD GUIDE
G R A M M A R
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H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
A F
EARLESS
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DVENTURE IN
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RAMMAR TYLE
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AND SAGE
GARY SPINA
Copyright © 2006 by Gary Spina
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spina, Gary.
The mountain man’s field guide to grammar : a fearless adventure in
grammar, style, and usage / Gary Spina.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-0740-2
ISBN-10: 1-4022-0740-9
1. English language—Grammar—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2.
English language—Rhetoric—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. English
language—Usage—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.
PE1112.S68 2006
428.2—dc22
2006003649
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
IM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
D
rEDICATION
This book is for Bob Fleming and John Spina, two
adventurers, two tramps in their younger days, two
men of character, honor, and courage. Their passion
is the woods and trout streams and the vast moun-
tain wilderness of the far northwest. They love
boats and cabins, wolves and hawks, and the wine
country, which is anywhere they are. This book is
for them and the good memories and the good times
back when old Bob and young John caught some
fair-sized salmon on Alaska’s Resurrection Bay. Few
people will ever see the wild and experience it as
they have.

rC
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Preface: The Mountain Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
The Horse before the Travois:
Parts of Speech and the Basic Sentence . . . . . . . . .8
Dogs and Ponies Pulling the Travois:
Identifying Sentence Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
The Way the Stick Floats:
Subject-Verb Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Civilizing Nouns, Verbs, and Other Wild Things . . . . .71
The Ha’r of the B’ar: Mastering the Wily Pronoun . .105
Loading Your Packhorse: Moody Verbs
and More of the Advanced Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
Counting Coup: Modifying and Modulating with
Adjectives and Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163
The Tamed Cougar and the Domesticated Mountain
Man: Encountering the Elusive Verbal . . . . . . . .196
My Stick Floats with Yours: Conjunctions and
Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213
Claws of the Clause, Forays of the Phrase: Subduing
Clauses and Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225
Smoke Signals: Style and Wile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
Usage and Stuff to Make Others Think You’re Smart:
The Fancy, Foofaraw Stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .341
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .357
Ar
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
My editor and friend Carrie Obry believed in this proj-
ect from the very beginning. It was Carrie’s genius,
vision, and professionalism that turned a disorgan-
ized manuscript into a book. As the project
advanced, Bethany Brown, Rachel Jay, and Ewurama
Ewusi-Mensah edited out most of my mistakes and
succeeded in making me look smart.
Before anyone else, it was Dianne Hermann who
was the first to believe this grand foolishness was
worthy enough to be published. Through several revi-
sions, two or three restructurings, and countless,
tedious proofreading, Dianne would work late into
the night reading every word. She poured over each
page of the manuscript with youthful laughter, unwa-
vering encouragement, and sage advice. She was ever
at my side, ever looking over my shoulder, ever at the
ready with marginal patience and an occasional
back-of-the-head slap of admonishment.
It was I alone, of course, who insisted on leaving
some random blunders and outright stupidity within
the pages of this book so as not to disappoint those
readers who delight in pointing them out at book
signings and dinner parties and such.