"Authoritative as it is amusing, this book distills everything Benjamin Dreyer has learned from the hundreds of books he has copyedited, including works by Elizabeth Strout, E. L. Doctorow, and Frank Rich, into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best foot forward in writing prose. Dreyer offers lessons on the ins and outs of punctuation and grammar, including how to navigate the words he calls 'the confusables,'...

A decade ago, Wolf's Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Now that we are completely immersed in the internet and digital devices, our ways of processing language have altered dramatically. In a series of letters, Wolf describes her hopes and concerns about what is happening to the brain as it adapts to digital mediums, illuminating complex ideas with anecdotes...

" A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking...

It's the most simple, unassuming, innocent-looking verb: 'to be'. Yet it is jam-packed with more different meanings, forms, and uses than any other English word. As he reveals be's multiple incarnations, David Crystal takes us to the heart of our flexible and changing language. He tells the intriguing story in 26 chapters, each linked to a particular usage. We meet circumstantial 'be' ('how are you?'), numerical 'be' ('two and two is four'), quotative...

" The quintessential A to Z guide to British English-perfect for every egghead and bluestocking looking to conquer the language barrier Oscar Wilde once said the Brits have "everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language." Any visitor to Old Blighty can sympathize with Mr. Wilde. After all, even fluent English speakers can be at sixes and sevens when told to pick up the "dog and bone" or "head to the loo," so they can "spend...

Common Core 1st Grade Reading is a set of high-quality, nationally-accepted, academic standards in reading. These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do before entering 2nd grade. This first in a series of programs covers weeks one through nine of first Grade, where kids learn 22 sight words, such as could, know, every, etc.

"With bright art done in the Japanese anime style, each book in this interactive early reading series features three different word families. When kids flip the pages, they get a new word and image within that word family. Word families help children recognize similarities between words that rhyme, and help them connect words with similar long or short vowel sounds. This familiarity helps kids read a word they don't necessarily know"--

Develop Confidence for Public Speaking: A Guide on How to Speak with Confidence. Discover Strategies for Overcoming Anxiety and Captivating Your Audience Public speaking is an essential skill that is required in various personal and professional situations, such as delivering presentations at work, speaking at social events, or addressing a large audience at a conference. However, speaking in front of an audience can be a daunting experience, and...

"Yan Lianke has secured his place as contemporary China's most essential and daring novelist, "with his superlative gifts for storytelling and penetrating eye for truth" (New York Times Book Review). His newest novel, The Day the Sun Died--winner of the Dream of the Red Chamber Award, one of the most prestigious honors for Chinese-language novels--is a haunting story of a town caught in a waking nightmare. In a little village nestled in the Balou...

"The future of handwriting is anything but certain. Its history, however, shows how much it has affected culture and civilization for millennia. In the digital age of instant communication, handwriting is less necessary than ever before, and indeed fewer and fewer schoolchildren are being taught how to write in cursive. Signatures--far from John Hancock's elegant model--have become scrawls. In her recent and widely discussed and debated essays, Anne...