Can anyone recommend a good book for researching English grammar/syntax/punctuation questions?
Eats Shoots and Leaves is one—it has SOME explanation about how various and assorted oddities came into being. Regardless, it’s an entertaining read. Fowler’s English Usage could be helpful, too, but I warn you, I have always found it very dry reading. This may sound kind of off the wall, but if you could locate a popular “History of the English Language” (I had such a class in Grad school, but not only was it long ago and far away (more than 20 years now), we called it HEL class for a reason. Cool teacher, though) I believe you would find it useful. (There was a series on PBS, a long time ago now—The Story of English… my library sysem has the VHS tapes)The reason I say this is because the language structure, and many of the oddities and idiosyncrasies stem from a certain event that took place in 1066AD—namely, the Norman Conquest. Because Anglo-Saxon was more or less driven underground for a long time, certain qualities were strengthened, others weakened. One of the reasons English is
