Book review: "Alphabet Juice"

"Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists and Spirits of Letters, Words and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory" by Roy Blount Jr., Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2008

I will get right to the point: "Alphabet Juice" made me laugh right out loud. It's the funniest book I've ever read about usage. Of course, it has very little competition for that honor, and a word nerd/grammar geek/usage freak like me is probably the book's ideal reader. Still, what truly sets the book apart is that the humor is laced with the writer's keen observations and with his knowledge. Roy Blount Jr. says he hopes the book will help people who want to write better. I learned a lot about the English language even as I giggled. I won't even try to reproduce the humor in this post  -- mostly because I am afraid I'd ruin the jokes. But I will quote this line from the preface: "The franchise I claim is not prescriptive, but over the counter. Quality over the counter."

Besides being a journalist and an author, Blount is a member of the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary and a man who has been successfully using words to entertain and enlighten for decades. He's also a radio personality -- on public radio's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" -- and a well-known Southerner, even though he lives in Massachusetts now. 

In "Alphabet Juice," Blount's premise is that words and letters have energy (juice). He believes that when we can look into the origins of words, we can see that language is not arbitrary. He even coined a word for the way the sound of a word can evoke its essence: sonicky. Among the examples he offers are queasy, rickety, zest and sluggish.

The book is arranged alphabetically, but it also has the print equivalents of hyperlinks with cross-references that lead the reader to other parts and back again. In his preface, Blount writes, "If you read this book the way I would read it and the way I wrote it, you will wear it out, thumbing back and forth, without ever being sure you've read it all." I resisted some of the references and enjoyed those when I reached them, but it makes sense to jump forward and back as needed.

Blount comments on usage issues such as whether the shortened form of microphone should be spelled "mic" or "mike." He favors "mike," pointing out that that spelling dates to the 1920s and that it makes a better verb when we need the past tense. (Precisely! I now have an argument to use against "open mic" night.) He also offers one of the best explanations of if and whether that I've ever read. He writes about its/it's, whom and myself. He advises against using "begs the question" because its true meaning is lost in today's muddle. 

Here are three words I learned in "Alphabet Juice":

• Zeugma is the word for a particular kind of word play where you use one word in different senses, as in: Taking my daily walk in an unfamiliar place, I became lost in thought and in the woods.   
• Nosism is the practice of "delivering one's opinions in the royal or editorial we." And illeism is referring to oneself in the third person. Both terms are from Latin.
• Tmesis is the practice of inserting a word or a syllable into a word for emphasis such as Ned Flanders' abso-diddly-lutely on "The Simpsons." (Profane or vulgar words are often employed for this. I won't use those constructions. You know what I mean.)

Blount also won my gratitude by mentioning copy editors, both dear and damned. Unlike many writers, Blount acknowledges the contributions of us nitpickers. He identifies the copy editor of "Alphabet Juice," Don McConnell, whose job, I imagine, was often delicious torture.