CONTACT: Cori Spragg

CONTACT Jessica Preeg, [email protected] or Bill Walsh, [email protected]

YES, I COULD CARE LESS How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk

Are you a language snob? Could you care less? Literally? Welcome to the club! But beware: You probably don’t know as much as you think you do. And the people who know the most are the least likely to share your pet peeves. Think it’s wrong to say “I could care less” when you mean “I couldn’t care less”? To say “literally” when you mean figuratively? Wrong, the experts will tell you. And they’re right, in a way.

In YES, I COULD CARE LESS: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk (St. Martin’s Griffin, June 2013, $14.95), Bill Walsh’s long-awaited follow-up to Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, Walsh argues with the sticklers and the apologists (and sometimes himself) on the various fronts in the language wars — and whether they amount to warfare at all or just a big misunderstanding.

Walsh, a longtime Washington Post copy editor, proposes a series of tests for writers and editors and armchair grammarians to use in deciding whether a “rule” is worth enforcing, whether a peeve is worth petting. On close calls, he makes a case for humoring the sticklers and minimizing distractions with “tiny acts of elegance.” Not wrong, he points out, doesn’t necessarily mean right. He peppers his argument with humor, self-deprecation, and snapshots of common mistakes and absurdities (“Armed gunmen”? They’re the worst kind).

Part usage manual, part memoir/confessional and part manifesto, Yes, I Could Care Less bounces from sadomasochism to weather geekery, from “Top Chef” to Monty Python, from the chile of New Mexico to the daiquiris of Las Vegas, with Walsh’s distinctive take on word choice, spelling and punctuation. It is a lively and often personal look at one man’s continuing journey through the obstacle course that some refer to, far too simply, as “grammar.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Walsh has been a copy editor at The Washington Post, under various titles, since 1997. Before that, he held a variety of reporting, editing and design positions at The Phoenix Gazette and The Washington Times. He was born in Pottsville, Pa., and grew up in Madison Heights, Mich., and Mesa, Ariz., before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Arizona. He now lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jacqueline Dupree. He talks about language online at The Slot (www.theslot.com), named for the chief’s position in an old-fashioned horseshoe-shaped copy desk, and tweets as @TheSlot.

978-1-250-00663-9 / $14.99 / paper / 256 pages