Junk English

Reaching as high as no.3 on the Washington Post best-seller list, this book pulls hundreds of examples from everyday life to show that sloppy English is not merely the province of teenagers and political leaders, but that we are all guilty parties in its abuse and misuse. On a daily basis we are subjected to a barrage of mindless jargon, euphemisms and weasel words such as impactful and smartise; empty rhetoric such as quality of life and revolutionary in nature; and broad swaths of modern-day grammatical humbug such as Artificial Vocabulary, Parasitic Intensifiers, Useless Cabooses and Hyphen-Monsters. Both concise and comprehensive, this witty diatribe proves that our language has become so pliable that the more we read and hear, the less we actually know.