![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Damn-English-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>If you are a writing and word nerd, or if clever humor and good laughs would lift your spirits, you\u2019ll probably enjoy spending time with Gary Sherbell\u2019s new book, Damn English!<\/em><\/p>\nSherbell, a New Yorker who has also written novels, plays and screenplays, has put the language he now damns to good use over the years. But in this book, he has plenty of legitimate (and humorous) observations and complaints about how confusing and sometimes ludicrous this hodgepodge mother tongue of ours can be.<\/p>\n
Damn English! <\/em>\u00a0is far from an academic tome on the proper use of the English language. Nor is it a guidebook for those wanting to write grammatically and clearly (something that seems to be valued less than it should be in these days of thumb typing, emojis and text messages that use letters in place of words). I have, and highly value, a shelf full of such reference works, within reach of my right hand as I type this review.<\/p>\n But I\u2019ll make room for Sherbell\u2019s book too, because it is clever, amusing and often right on point. Let\u2019s face it: English is confusing and sometimes nonsensical, for those of us who grew up speaking it as well as for those brave souls who learn it as a second language.<\/p>\n Sherbell enjoys pointing out and poking fun at the bewildering words that are spelled similarly but pronounced quite differently, confusing homonyms and heteronyms, irregular verbs, words with multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings, and so on. \u00a0He has fun with the plethora of words and phrases that mean the same thing \u2013 or do they, really, after he examines then, perhaps too literally? And then there are the words that have \u2013 shhhh!<\/em> \u2013 \u201cdirty\u201d connotations as well as their more socially acceptable meanings.<\/p>\n He takes familiar figures of speech, cliches and phrases that we use unthinkingly and proceeds to dissect and ponder them until he has us laughing.<\/p>\n Much of what Sherbell gives us is satirical or tongue-in-cheek, amusing and also sometimes thought provoking, in a light-hearted sort of way.<\/p>\n I must admit that as a career writer and (worse!) editor, I started marking a few minor grammatical and punctuation errors as I read. But as soon as I underlined his incorrect use of the non-word \u201calot,\u201d what did I find but a parenthetical note that pages to come would include his \u201ddissertation on the proper spelling of \u2018a lot.\u2019 \u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n At that, I gave up and let myself relax and laugh a bit. Or should I say a tad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson DAMN ENGLISH! By Gary Sherbell. Black Rose Writing. 131 pages. $15.95, paperback. If you are a writing and word nerd, or if clever humor and good laughs would lift your spirits, you\u2019ll probably enjoy spending time with Gary Sherbell\u2019s new book, Damn English! Sherbell, a New Yorker who has also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,697,1222],"tags":[1484,1483,1482,1485],"class_list":["post-3392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-nonfiction","category-grammar-and-writing","category-satirical-humor","tag-contemporary-humor","tag-damn-english","tag-gary-sherbell","tag-writing-and-grammar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3394,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions\/3394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}