The term "malaphor," a combination of "metaphor" and "malaprop," was coined in 1976 by Lawrence Harrison, a senior executive in the State Department. Harrison found gems in endless bureaucratic meetings, such as "he said it off the top of his cuff" or "don't rock the trough." Author David Hatfield has been collecting malaphors for over thirty years. He Smokes like a Fish and Other Malaphors (Unintentional Idiom and Word Blends) is his offering to language enthusiasts everywhere. Malaphors know no bounds. From the man on the street to President Barack Obama, a truly diverse array of people is represented within these covers. Hatfield has mined for malaphors in every imaginable venue: movies, television, sports, music, the internet, at work, and on the street. People from all over the world have shared gems on Hatfield's website. So sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy this truly unique collection of verbal play and mix-ups.

The term "malaphor," a combination of "metaphor" and "malaprop," was coined in 1976 by Lawrence Harrison, a senior executive in the State Department. Harrison found gems in endless bureaucratic meetings, such as "he said it off the top of his cuff" or "don't rock the trough."Author David Hatfield has been collecting malaphors for over thirty years. His first book, "He Smokes like a Fish and Other Malaphors (Unintentional Idiom and Word Blends)" was his offering to language enthusiasts everywhere. Now he has assembled a second hilarious collection, entitled "Things Are Not Rosy-Dory: Malaphors from Politicians and Pundits". The malaphors in this book come mainly from the world of politics, where malaphors are ubiquitous. Malaphors know no party allegience. From the Malaphorer-in-Chief Donald Trump to Democrats to Republicans, a truly diverse array of people is represented within these covers. So sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy this truly unique collection of verbal play and mix-ups.

The Elements of Style ("Strunk & White") is an American English writing style guide. It is one of the most influential and best-known prescriptive treatments of English grammar and usage in the United States. This book aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. In accordance with this plan it lays down three rules for the use of the comma, instead of a score or more, and one for the use of the semicolon, in the belief that these four rules provide for all the internal punctuation that is required by nineteen sentences out of twenty. Similarly, it gives in Chapter III only those principles of the paragraph and the sentence which are of the widest application. The book thus covers only a small portion of the field of English style. The experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of theory, which he may prefer to that offered by any textbook.

In this book, Orin Hargraves provides a concise and lively guide to the most abused phrases in the English language today.

Step-by-step guide reveals best practices for enhancing Web sites with Ajax A step-by-step guide to enhancing Web sites with Ajax. Uses progressive enhancement techniques to ensure graceful degradation (which makes sites usable in all browsers). Shows readers how to write their own Ajax scripts instead of relying on third-party libraries. Web site designers love the idea of Ajax--of creating Web pages in which information can be updated without refreshing the entire page. But for those who aren't hard-core programmers, enhancing pages using Ajax can be a challenge. Even more of a challenge is making sure those pages work for all users. In Bulletproof Ajax, author Jeremy Keith demonstrates how developers comfortable with CSS and (X)HTML can build Ajax functionality without frameworks, using the ideas of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement to ensure that the pages work for all users. Throughout this step-by-step guide, his emphasis is on best practices with an approach to building Ajax pages called Hijax, which improves flexibility and avoids worst-case scenarios.

"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

This book presents an innovative and novel approach to linguistic semantics, beginning with the idea that language can be described as a system for the expression of linguistic Meanings as particular surface forms or Texts. Semantics is specifically that system of rules that ensures a correct transition from a Semantic Representation of the Meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in the terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses in detail the problems of Semantic Representation —including the semantic structure of utterances, the semantics of Causation in English, and communicative, or information, structure. Based on the author’s life-long dedication to the study of the semantics and syntax of natural language, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to the language sciences whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.

This is a compendium of largely original material gathered over a lifetime of snapping up unconsidered trifles, including typos, headlines, odd business names, book titles, spellchecking blunders, howlers, and much more besides. In this second edition, there are new chapters and added material throughout.All the royalties from this new edition are being donated to a very worthy cause, the Perth (Scotland) Branch of Guide Dogs.The centrepiece of the book is a chapter 'Mr Malaprop - a man of his word' - the secretly collected mis-speakings of a former colleague, one of which forms the book's title. She smokes like a fish places all these blunders into categories, explores the various kinds of error, warns of the perils of the computerised spellchecker and generally takes a delight in our ability to think one thing and say or write another. For information about the author and his other eBooks - fiction and study skills guides - go to www.locheesoft.com.