"Whether you're editing your own writing or someone else's, you will find Lapsing Into a Comma an invaluable and entertaining resource. Part commentary, part stylebook, it addresses not only the usual usage topics (split infinitives, that vs. which and a historic vs. an historic) but also some issues too new or obscure to be found in the traditional manuals (e-mail vs. email, how to tell a playmate from a Playboy Bunny and why a right hook is a bad example of a punch). In an opinionated, humorous and, yes, curmudgeonly way, Bill Walsh of the Washington Post strikes an often unpredictable balance between the traditional and the progressive in examining the state of American English usage in the computer age."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes index.

1. Beyond Search and Replace: Using Your Head as Well as Your Stylebook 2. You Could Look It Up!: How to Use a Dictionary With Style 3. Holding the (Virtual) Fort: Disturbing Trends in the Information Age 4. Literally Speaking: Write What You Mean, Mean What You Write 5. Giving 110 Percent: Why You Needed Those Math Classes After All

6. Matters of Sensitivity: Correctness, Political and Otherwise 7. He Said, She Said: Quotations in the News 8. The Big Type: Headlines and Captions 9. Dash It All, Period: The Finer Points of Punctuation 10. The Curmudgeon's Stylebook: Details, Details.