Ratings3
Average rating3.7
"A provocative and jaunty romp through the dos and don'ts of writing for the internet" (NYT)--the practical, the playful, and the politically correct--from BuzzFeed copy chief Emmy Favilla. A World Without "Whom" is Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the internet age, and BuzzFeed global copy chief Emmy Favilla is the witty go-to style guru of webspeak. As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of "correct" writing? When Favilla was tasked with creating a style guide for BuzzFeed, she opted for spelling, grammar, and punctuation guidelines that would reflect not only the site's lighthearted tone, but also how readers actually use language IRL. With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of internet-age expression, Favilla makes a case for breaking the rules laid out by Strunk and White: A world without "whom," she argues, is a world with more room for writing that's clear, timely, pleasurable, and politically aware. Featuring priceless emoji strings, sidebars, quizzes, and style debates among the most lovable word nerds in the digital media world--of which Favilla is queen--A World Without "Whom" is essential for readers and writers of virtually everything: news articles, blog posts, tweets, texts, emails, and whatever comes next . . . so basically everyone.
Reviews with the most likes.
Sigh. Linguistic nonfiction is my literary security blanket. I've read pretty much every pop linguistics nonfiction book out there and enjoyed them all. But not this one!
Emmy Favilla seems to have no sense of who her audience is: she veers wildly between offering highly specific advice for those developing a style guide for heavily perused blogs and pedantically defining “prescriptivism.” No sooner does she tell people to follow their own instincts than she derides those whose instincts include “whom.” She comes off as pretentious, self-important and judgey. My biggest problem with the book is that I didn't like her. But I didn't like the book either: without much central structure, it wanders through half-hearted odes to descriptivist language use, punctuated with screenshots of the author's slack chats and buzzfeed articles.
Because Internet covered many of the same topics more comprehensively and was much more fun to read.