Mignon Fogerty

It's a noun! It's an adverb! It's Grammar Girl! Author Mignon Fogarty created the fictional Grammar Girl as a nonjudgmental, kind superhero for those of us who occasionally—or constantly—struggle with the rules of writing. Unlike the uninterested or knuckle-rapping English teachers who failed to teach you how to properly use a semicolon or where to place a comma, Fogarty offers easy-to-remember tips for the language's most treacherous words and syntaxes. Take a classic linguistic thorn in the side: affect vs. effect. Fogarty explains, usually employ "a" for verbs, and "e" for nouns. But Grammar Girl goes beyond simply expecting you to remember this rule; she gives you a mnemonic device to help. "The arrow affected the aardvark. The effect was eye-popping"; just remember that affect goes with the a-words, and effect with the e-word. Under her hero's name, Fogarty has been eradicating the world of one grammar crime at a time through her podcast. Now, she brings her easy lessons to the printed word in the Grammar Girl's first book, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. It's like a little "bat signal" on your shelf for grammar emergencies.
Tue., July 22, 7:30 p.m., 2008