Yes, I Could Care Less

The author & copy editor sheds more insights on the English language in this book on rights and wrongs—and why not wrong doesn’t necessarily mean right.

“Some will call Walsh a demigod of usage. Others will call him a demagogue. I call him, oxymoronically, our most amiable curmudgeon of style.”—Charles Harrington Elster, author of The Accidents of Style and Verbal Advantage

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 his long-awaited follow-up to Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, Bill 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.

Part usage manual, part confessional, and part manifesto, Yes, I Could Care Less bounces from sadomasochism to weather geekery, from Top Chef to Mondy Python, from the chile of New Mexico to the daiquiris of Las Vegas, with Walsh’s distinctive take on the way we write and talk.

Yes, I Could Care Less 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.”

“How can you not love a language maven who admits up front…that he’s nuts?… Oh, and did I mention that's he's funny? Armed gunmen, he tells us, are “the worst kind.” And you probably think you know what domestic beer is. But as the author can tell you, it's in the eye of the bartender.”—Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I