Want your writing to sell, shock, or just sing? The acclaimed author of Wired Style presents a hip, real-world guide to the rules of grammar—and when to break them.
Today's writers need more spunk than Strunk. Whether crafted for the Great American Novel, Madison Avenue advertising, or Grammy Award-winning rap lyrics, memorable writing must jump off the page. Now, from copy veteran Constance Hale comes a fun, informative, indispensable guide to taking your writing from ordinary to extraordinary.
Sin and Syntax is more than just a style manual with examinations of sentence structure and parts of speech. In addition to spelling out the basic rules, Constance Hale teaches you when—and how—to effectively break them. Chock full of examples from traditional and nontraditional prose—from advertising jingles to song lyrics to literary classics—Sin and Syntax shows you why learning to "sin" will make you a better writer. Discover how to:
 Distinguish between words that are "pearls" and words that are "potatoes"
 Innovate with adjectives to avoid clichés
 Avoid "couch potato thinking" and "com-mitment phobia" when choosing verbs
 Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphor