I'm not sure how much I've mentioned in the past but I'm a bit of a word nerd. I obviously love to read but along with that I have a bit of a "thing" for words. This book, You're Saying It Wrong, by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras is right up my alley. The tag line for the book is: A pronunciation guide to the 150 most commonly mispronounced words and their tangled histories of misuse."
Matt and I began reading the book on our recent trip to Tennessee and it was the perfect road trip material. First of all, this book is funny. For each word, there is a pronunciation or pronunciations, a definition and then a page worth of information about each word.
The introduction of the book shows you right away that the book will be witty. While informative, the authors did a great job of including little bits of humor and that is what made this book continually enjoyable.
Now, like I mentioned, there are 150 words discussed in the book. The word is presented on the top of the page and the acceptable pronunciations are just underneath that. A definition is next. Regarding the pronunciations, I realized there are MANY of these words that I have been pronouncing incorrectly. OOPS!
The main part of each page is a blurb about the word. Most often, this gave information about where the word is derived and what those words means. It may also discuss the culture of the word and even a story about who first used that word, etc.
Matt and I both really enjoyed this book. Some of the words were new to us, completely, but many of them were words we knew of and just didn't know much about. I thought this was an incredibly well done and I think anyone with an interest in words would enjoy this fun and educational book!
*Thank you, Blogging for Books, for sending me this book!*
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