In her first little book, our own Meredith Forrester uses Donald Trump’s tweets to explain the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation in a way that anyone, even the president of the United States, can understand.

If you know Meredith, you’ll know that the sum of what she knows about English grammar, punctuation, style and usage barely fits inside an encyclopædia of English grammar, punctuation, style and usage. But now she’s distilled it into a little blue stocking-stuffer that uses the power of grammar to copyedit the most powerful man in the world down to size. 

This gift-able guide to usage and style is published by Thames & Hudson Australia. And you’re in for a tremendous treat because all orders placed on our website will be signed by the author! Not sad. 

In case you’d like to go behind the scenes, we also interviewed Meredith for our blog. Time Magazine wanted to do a major photo shoot but we said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

What could be better than a Stop. Grammar Time. voucher? A Stop. Grammar Time. class! But you can use the voucher to enrol in a class, so it all works out.

Give the gift of grammar.

— Our vouchers are e-vouchers, which means each one is a web page containing a unique voucher code.
— When you buy a voucher, we email you a link to your e-voucher. You can pass this link on to your voucher recipient.
— Each voucher is redeemable for an enrolment into a one-day Stop. Grammar Time. class in Melbourne or Sydney.

Need to know more? Find our voucher FAQ below. Read more about the course, and see upcoming dates and locations, here.

What could be better than a Write Right voucher? A Write Right class! But you can use the voucher to enrol in a class, so it all works out.

— Our vouchers are e-vouchers, which means each one is a web page containing a unique voucher code.
— When you buy a voucher, we email you a link to your e-voucher. You can pass this link on to your voucher recipient.
— Each voucher is redeemable for an enrolment into a Write Right class in Melbourne or Sydney.

Need to know more? Find our voucher FAQ below. Read more about the course, and see upcoming dates and locations, here.

Our Stop. Grammar Time. bag is the perfect gift for the grammar aficionado in your life. That annoying bastard will love this tote! It’s also really well suited to people who like to carry things in bags. I’ll tell you what else: this bag has two handles. It is made of nice, thick cotton canvas. It is black. It is screen-printed here in Melbourne by All of the Above. And it features artwork from the amazing Tim Lahan.

What else? You get one for free if you enrol in our Stop. Grammar Time. course. But even if you do that, you’ll probably want another one to give to your mum.

Back in September 2016 we hosted a major copywriting event: the launch of Tait Ischia’s Copywrong to Copywriter. We were excited, that day, to be deemed ‘the most appropriate, copywriting-specific venue in town’. Thanks, Tait! We were also excited about the book, which sold out in a flash. And now, as our interminable shop renovation etches its slow progress upon this decade, we’ve finally got organised and ordered some copies for our online emporium.

What is it about? ‘Copywrong to Copywriter is a handbook for anyone who feels like they can’t write to save themselves. If you think you’ve got the wrong tone of voice, don’t understand the ins and outs of grammar or just don’t feel confident writing about yourself without sounding like an idiot, read this book.’ True.

Penned by Tait and designed by Tristan Main, with illustrations by Jacob Zinman-Jeanes, it’s a tidy little tome that we wholeheartedly endorse. Read our interview with Tait here and/or buy your copy via the button below. All checkers-out receive a bonus bookmark.

Our Stop. Grammar Time. mug is the perfect gift for the grammar aficionado in your life. That annoying bastard will love this mug! It is also really well suited to left-handed people who like to drink things from ceramic vessels. If you hold it with your right hand, no one will be able to see what’s on your mug … but you will. What else do you need to know? This mug has one handle. It is black. And it features artwork by the amazing Tim Lahan.

Kate Kiefer Lee and Nicole Fenton have written such a good guide to writing for the web that we’re scared to write about it on the web. But we shouldn’t be: it’s very helpful! For a preview of the order and sense contained in this book, behold its online resources.

How to write clearly, concisely and naturally is Nicely Said’s primary lesson—which, as it will tell you, is mostly about considering the reader. 

Nicole: ‘There’s a huge gap between what we learned in school and what it takes to be a web writer in practice. There are plenty of great style guides and books on writing out there, but they don’t talk about the mindset of a web writer and they don’t give you exercises to actually get down into the work. So we wanted to do that.’

Kate: ‘Companies get so focused on whatever it is they have to say that they forget to think about the people at the other end of their content. This leads to writing that’s overly formal, confusing, and cold. Thinking of your content as part of a conversation helps you communicate clearly and warms up your writing.’

Preach. If you’re looking for more gold from these authors, check out Tiny Content Framework—Nicole’s open-source project—and Voice and Tone, Kate’s guide for MailChimp.

‘Prune it out, clean it up, make the point,’ said Joan Didion. If you want to actually do that stuff, though, read this book by Helen Sword.

Helen—a professor at the University of Auckland—is the person who invented the term ‘zombie nouns’. She did so in a now-famous New York Times op-ed published in July 2012, and she’s equally thought-provoking-yet-cheerfully-succinct in this li’l gem, The Writer’s Diet.

Says the sales pitch: 

‘If your sentences are weighed down with passives and prepositions, be-verbs and waste words, The Writer’s Diet is for you—a practical, punchy introduction to good writing.’

All true. The book expands on an established editing manoeuvre called ‘the paramedic method’, but feels like the last-said, best-said. Try the diagnostic test on Helen’s website! You’ll need the book to work out what to do with your prepositions, adverbs, be-verbs and nominalisations, though. Have fun!

Wow, this book is full of good advice. It’s not organised under snippy subheadings like a LinkedIn article. It’s like having a cup o’ tea with a funny, professory sort-of friend who enjoys expounding upon writing and how difficult it is. In other words, you have to actually read it, by which process it demonstrates that good writing is writing you end up reading.

Sam Leith is a British novelist, broadcaster and columnist who has clearly spent a lot of his life thinking about writing as well as doing it. Write to the Point will take you on a trip from Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals to subtweets—revealing, via trial and error, that good writing is the same in important ways. Mainly that it’s generous. But how? Put the kettle on, Sally. We’re going in.

Some people love The Elements of Style, believing it to be God’s guide to English grammar; some people hate The Elements of Style, wanting to burn it in a fire. Many people didn’t feel any way about it until this edition was released with Maira Kalman’s beautiful dog painting on the cover.

Whichever angle you’re coming from, welcome! This book will be a conversation starter in your life. It’s the most famous book about English grammar and style. It was spearheaded by EB White (that’s right! The Charlotte’s Web guy), first as a New Yorker article about a certain hard-nosed grammar pamphlet authored by White’s one-time Cornell University professor William Strunk Jr, and then as a book based on the article about the pamphlet.

It’s very ... confidently written—often quite baller. For instance: ‘Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.’ 

In truth, it’s partly a book about grammar and mostly a book about style. If you want to minimise the stress in your life, you shouldn’t mix those things up. Neither Strunk nor White will tell you the difference, though. So remember: just because they recommend something, doesn’t mean it’s a rule. Okay, we’re done here. Add this puppy to your cart.

Oh my God. Yes, you can! Thank Lucifer for this book. Drawing on the Chicago Manual of Style’s online Q&A forum, the University of Chicago Press editorial staff brings us solutions to the most common grammatical freak-outs.

Says the sales pitch: ‘Champions of common sense, the editors offer smart, direct and occasionally tongue-in-cheek responses that have guided writers and settled arguments for more than 15 years.’

They cover curly punctuation situations, capitalisation issues, idiom misuse (is it happy medium or happy median?) and spelling (how do you write down the sound of a scream?).

But back to the titular question.

‘There is no historical or grammatical foundation for considering sentences that begin with a conjunction such as and, but or so to be in error.’
—Chicago Manual of Style

‘Has it ever been wrong to begin a sentence with and or but? No, it has not. We have been breaking this rule all the way from the ninth-century Old English Chronicle through the current day.’
—Merriam-Webster

‘But since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.’
—William Strunk Jr and EB White, The Elements of Style, 1959 

 So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

A companion to The Little Red Writing Book and The Little Black Book of Business Writing, The Little Green Grammar Book is the one we stock.

Australian poet, essayist and teacher Mark Tredinnick looks inside sentences and shows you the subjects and verbs. He is easygoing but he answers the tough questions. He makes grammar useful. He even makes it fun. We hope he doesn’t start his own grammar school.

If you want to stop sentences from working you over and get them working for you instead, this is the best place to start. And in truth, it’s not even that ‘little’! By page 218, you’ll be chuckling knowingly about the reflexive pronoun misuse in our next sentence. It will be the best Christmas present for yourself.

Mary Norris is obviously a massive legend:

She would take issue with that use of ‘massive’, though, because we do not mean that she contains a lot of mass. Mary started at the New Yorker in 1978 and worked her way up their editing hierarchy from query proofreader to page okay-er. Her book, Between You and Me: Confessions of a comma queen, is both a memoir and a meditation on editing and house style.

Mary is neither a grammar pedant nor a breezy descriptivist: she treads a middle path. ‘“Whom” may indeed be on the way out,’ she writes, ‘but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.’ She loves precision but eschews rules when the context calls for willow-bending.

Mary is trying to rile pompous over-correctors with her title. Most people think I is grander, but me is always correct after between because it’s the object of that preposition. ‘And what’s wrong with being fussy? That’s what we’re getting paid for.’

*Salutes*

While MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow criticises what POTUS does and the male late-night hosts of the world make funnies about what he says, The Good Copy’s own Meredith Forrester focuses squarely on the bananas ways in which he tweets.

For months, Meredith has been correcting Donald Trump’s tweets with suggestions for how he could better handle his grammar and punctuation decisions. And now she’s packaged these excellent dressings-down into a zine called Okay But. 

In her own words: ‘I’ve been quoting Drumpf’s grammatically iffy tweets and offering him suggested fixes in 140 characters. My zine comprises screenshots of most of those tweets alongside longer explanations that are limited by the page grid. It’s not exhaustive and I’m not a pedant; I want to explain his grammatical issues in a way that anyone, even the president of the United States, can understand.’

Okay But is a Risograph-printed study that will make you smarter and wish he were too.

Here’s a sample tweet:

@realDonaldDrumpf
Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show

@mdforrester
Okay but you should’ve thought twice about using the preposition ‘by’ because the ratings, bad or otherwise, didn’t actually do the firing

‘Reads like a hilarious catch-up call with an old friend. What a pleasure to hear from this fresh, extremely relevant point of view.’ —Abbi Jacobson, Broad City

‘I wish Brodie was the voice of my inner monologue … extremely relatable, unashamedly funny, powerful and beautifully vulnerable.’ —Courtney Barnett, music star

‘Haha is writing a book just trying the hardest you’ve ever tried OR WHAT.’ —Brodie Lancaster, book-writer

Comments by staff reviewer Penny Modra:

Our beloved colleague Brodie has written a book and we’re selling signed copies. It’s called No Way! Okay, Fine. Is it about working in the client service department of The Good Copy? I’ll admit, we were worried. But no! It’s a funny, honest, straight-talking memoir: a life story from age 6-ish to 26, from Bundaberg to NYC, told through the lenses of pop culture, feminism and feelings. It’s also a great read at a hot price. 

Each copy is signed by the author and probs includes a cheeky message.

Hello there. Welcome to the official zine of Word Alert!, a festival that began as an idle suggestion one Sunday at our Collingwood Crossword Club.

‘It’ll be the Salami Festival of crossword festivals,’ we said. ‘We’ll have coffee,’ we said. ‘And pencils!’ How it became a three-day bonanza in front of the NGV with stadium bleachers, a stage made of black and white cubes, two spelling bees and a tournament, we do not know. But our destiny manifested and now we have some zines left over. 

So what’s in this zine? Every grid commissioned for the festival—and some bonus crosswords too. The setters are Collingwood Crossword Club members (and honorary members) Brendan Emmett Quigley (The New York Times), Thomas ‘TT’ Tkatchenko (rarely seen in public), and Chris ‘CB’ Black and Siobhan ‘SL’ Linde (The Big Issue, The Cruciverbalist). The designer is Dennis Grauel, and the typeface is Lido STF.

If you’re traditionally scared of cryptics, as I am, start with TT’s primer on page 4. If you thumb your nose at UK-style grids, try BEQ’s US-style quick, page 10. This zine, like Crossword Club itself, welcomes both nerds and newbs—and is best undertaken with a biscuit.

Where do we go from here? Either across or down, I would say.

The pomodoro system of time management was invented in the late 1980s by Francesco Cirillo. It is useful when you need to write something. If you wish to follow it to the letter, you must use a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. If you purchase your tomato from us, you’ll receive a 19-step ‘directions for use’ guide authored by our colleague Pork Chop. The directions will be Risograph-printed on handsome yellow paper, folded in a complicated manner and packaged with your tomato in a cardboard box. 

The tomato itself is mechanical and needs no battery. It is adjustable within a time range of one and sixty minutes. It can survive temperatures of between –10°C and +55°C, and it packs ≤0.45 N m of operating torque. To set the timer, turn clockwise to 60 before turning anticlockwise to the number of minutes required. 

If you didn’t think the Collingwood Crossword Club was cool, think again. Look at these double-sided totes we made! Classic on the front; cryptic on the back. Now everyone knows it’s hip to fill squares.

You don’t even have to be a club member to own one. But you do have to solve this cryptic clue:

DEFINITELY CARRIES BAGS (5,5)

Just kidding—you don’t have to solve the clue. We will mail you a tote in exchange for a one-time payment of AU$30.

These totes have two handles. They’re made of nice, thick cotton canvas. They’re designed by Crossword Club member Dennis Grauel, typeset in Lido STF and screen-printed here in Melbourne by Tim at Sound Merch.

If you do actually want to join Crossword Club, see our calendar for upcoming dates. We meet every month on one Sunday or another.

Welcome to issue 5 of The Good Copy Gazette. We had big dreams for this one: a cut-out coupons page, a fancy ad for the tomato timers we imported from China, an explanation of how dictionaries are made, an interview with Gary Busey. But we left it all until the last minute and now the fruits of victory have turned to ashes in our mouths.

Having said that, it’s still bloody good. Issue 5 features:

— a cover photo that Seb took of his daughter, Cleo, walking a dog past Spares Store on Smith Street
— an introduction
— a new short story by Max Olijnyk
— an ad for our crossword, spelling and grammar festival (now over)
— Pork Chop’s instructions for those who wish to master the pomodoro method of time management
— our new column, ‘From the mailbag’
— Sinead and Brodie’s documentary feature about Johnston Street, shown here as a photo spread with captions
— photos from Meredith’s Make Grammar Great Again book launch
— twelve tweets by Gary Busey.

All this is printed on recycled paper by Shout Out Loud, who also stapled it. We commend it to you.

This issue of The Good Copy Gazette is so bloody good.

It features:

— a cover photo that Meredith took out of our office window
— an introduction
— an ad for Filmme Fatales issue 8
— an ad for Crossword Club
— a no-longer current calendar of events
— an interview with Meredith about her zine, Okay But, which teaches grammar by correcting the tweets of Donald Trump
— a gallery from the IPF Photo Book and Zine Fair 2016
— an interview with Some Stories author and Gaz designer Max Olijnyk
— an interview with our colleague Daniel about how he started buying Mac laptop keyboards and selling individual keys on eBay for a tidy profit
— a review of writing a book
— an interview with Leo from Jim’s Greek Tavern, Johnston Street
— an ad for our new ‘Stay nervous’ tote bags.

All this is printed on recycled paper and stapled by Shout Out Loud. We commend it to you.

This issue of The Good Copy Gazette is so bloody good.

It features:

— a cover photo by the very talented and friendly Alex Kelaart (more on him later in this list)
— an introduction
— a sort of accurate calendar of events
— an imagined interview with none other than Mary Norris, New Yorker copy editor
— a review of America
— a review of sitting around doing nothing
— an interview with two Kelaarts, Oliver and Alex (remember him?), and two people who bought their photographs
— an interview about crosswords conducted via crossword
— a rumination on the possibility that these may indeed be the days
— an interview with dead-set legend Robyn Holt
— a couple of ads for The Good Copy.

All this is housed in a modest 24-page, full-colour, saddle-stitched A5 volume that you simply must own. Quantities are limited and close to exhausted, so get in while you can.

This issue of The Good Copy Gazette is so bloody good.

It features:

— a cover photo taken by our colleague Rachel depicting the aftermath of her bike accident
— an introduction
— an ad for Filmme Fatales
— a very out-of-date calendar of events
— an ad for Stop. Grammar Time.
— Mere’s grammar corner: learned or learnt?
— a review of the original Star Wars trilogy by a first-time watcher
— an interview with Penny Modra
— a rumination on moving half a block up the street, from 27–29 Johnston Street to 19–21 Johnston Street
— a review of fracturing one’s jaw
— twenty-one Collingwood-themed haikus
— our favourite photos from recent events presided over by The Good Copy
— an interview with Kelly from Trang Bakery, Smith Street.

It’s not a long read, but what is, these days? Yes, the cover is a bit confronting but all the better to promote bike safety. Enjoy!

Some—not all, mind you—of the people who come to our monthly Crossword Club meets are really good at cryptic crosswords. Two of them are the editors of this zine, The Cruciverbalist. Some of them are contributors to this zine, The Cruciverbalist. One of them is the printer of this zine—you get the idea.

So we’re excited to be able to sell it to you! This edition is space-themed and features grids by editors Hieronymus and Monocle, and contributors Lancelot, Symptomatic, Ozpiper, ADH, James Martin and Felix.

But don’t buy issue 8—or any issue—without also visiting The Cruciverbalist’s website. They have sections where you can learn about cryptics online, book the editors for a seminar about cryptics in person and/or enter their clue-writing competitions.

The Cruciverbalist ruins a gin maze (8).

Some—not all, mind you—of the people who come to our monthly Crossword Club meets are really good at cryptic crosswords. Two of them are the editors of this zine, The Cruciverbalist. Some of them are contributors to this zine, The Cruciverbalist. One of them is the printer of this zine—you get the idea.

So we’re excited to be able to sell it to you! This edition is Simpsons-themed (because The Simpsons is sometimes crossword-themed) and features grids by editors Hieronymus and Monocle, and contributors LR and DA. Yes, that LR and that DA.

But don’t buy issue 7—or any issue—without also visiting The Cruciverbalist’s website. They have sections where you can learn about cryptics online, book the editors for a seminar about cryptics in person and/or enter their clue-writing competitions.

Let’s try one: The Cruciverbalist is what you get when you mix up a gin maze (8). Okay, not great, but you get the idea.

The first in our semi-regular poster series is designed by a very funny man named Rob Cordiner. You may know his work from such work as Smalltime Books or Heavy Time—or our very own logo and ‘brand identity’. But aside from all that, Rob is hilarious. He came up with this one on the fly when he was working on ideas for something else.

‘What do you think of this?’ he asked Penny and Max via email. Penny’s reply was as follows: ‘I am going to Officeworks right now to print this!!’ Five minutes later, she sent a follow-up email: ‘I’m just about dying about this.’

Instead of printing it at Officeworks, we decided to get it done properly on cool, pastel-blue paper in a limited run of 50. It comes rolled up in a tube, so it will be curly when you open it but it also easily sits flat if you put some books on it or stick it up. It’s just shy of A1—594 x 840mm, to be exact. Stick it on your wall or your window, Mulder-style.

‘Max Olijnyk has written a book. And to make matters worse, it’s good.’ —Jason Crombie

Our former colleague Max Olijnyk is a truth-teller who skewers things exactly right. His leaving The Good Copy to become a writer and editor in Wellington, New Zealand, was a blow to us. At least he published a book of his short stories as soon as he got there. And here it is for you to buy.

Some Stories is written by Max and published through Freddo Books, with a cover design by Ed Davis. You can read more about it in this interview previously published in The Good Copy Gazette.

For more wisdom from Max, read the photo captions on our blog, read his interview with Monster Children or buy this book!

Trying to describe what’s in Rosie Dickens’s book is like telling a ‘you had to be there’ story to someone who wasn’t there: it’ll never be as good as the real thing and you’ll kind of embarrass yourself for attempting but ultimately failing to capture it with words.

The book is made up of images that are made up of words. The images play with meme-style joke formats, and Rosie often dips into motivational poster territory—if the person making motivational posters is a little off-kilter and wants to destroy the motivational poster industry from the inside.

The source of all this is Rosie’s disturbing Instagram presence, and the publisher is Freddo Books.

Vanessa Berry is objectively the biggest wig in the Australian zine scene. We emailed her to ask if she knew how we could get any copies of this, her first book (published in 2007), and she sent some that she had under her bed.

Comments by staff reviewer Penny Modra:

It’s hard for me to describe Vanessa Berry’s writing because I’m such a super-fan, but I’ll try! She’s been a regular maker of zines since the mid-’90s. Laughter and the Sound of Teacups was a long-running series that involved Vanessa recounting an entire day in her life per issue: ‘I would write about my thoughts and actions every 23rd of the month in a detailed, eidetic style. I tried to explain my days exactly how they occurred, including all the important tiny things that make up everyday life.’

A bunch of these stories are gathered together in Strawberry Hills Forever. It’s kind of a self-imposed challenge of noticing. I love it because it reminds me to look at things.

In Filmme Fatales issue 8, editor Brodie Lancaster looks to the future—because that is the theme around which everything in this issue has been created! Contributors Lesley Arfin, Danielle Henderson, Caroline Goldfarb, Ruby Tandoh and 24 other writers, artists and designers explore the now and the next, the future of film, and what kind of hope our favourite characters hold through the tough times.

After four years and eight issues, the Melbourne-made zine celebrating women in film is hitting pause on the remote and going on hiatus—so it’s a good thing that issue 8 is the biggest ever. It features interviews with actors Lily Rabe and Melanie Lynskey and filmmakers Logan Kibens, Karen Bernstein, Stella Meghie, Julia Hart, Susanna Fogel and Celia Rowlson-Hall. It was designed by Hope Lumsden-Barry with Stuart Geddes.

Filmme Fatales is published by The Good Copy (and we’re bloody proud of it, by the by).

Filmme Fatales issue 7 is all about space: wanting space, feeling overwhelmed by space, getting lost in space and being stuck in a space you need to escape.

Created and edited by The Good Copy’s own Brodie Lancaster, Filmme Fatales issue 7 is a mix of listicles (but, like, the good kind), in-depth film analysis and short fiction, with colourful illustration and photography sprinkled throughout. You’ll read about the house in Melbourne where Dogs in Space was set, the complicated feminist film universe of James Cameron, and the literal space that a small woman called Iris Apfel occupies in our public consciousness.

Designed by Hope Lumsden-Barry, this issue is chock-full of articles that you’ll dog-ear for the tram ride home and images that you’ll want to tear out and attach to your fridge. Maybe buy a second ‘display’ copy, just to be safe.

Filmme Fatales is published by The Good Copy (and we’re bloody proud of it, by the by).

‘The language changes, and tastes change also. Language is a living thing; parts fall off or atrophy, new growths turn out to be useful and add to diversity. Some additions are ugly but stubborn (bogan, arty-farty), others are coy and euphemistic (colourful racing identity, tired and emotional, senior moment).’

So says Susan Butler—editor of the Macquarie Dictionary and writer of this book, The Aitch Factor, about being the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary.

But language change also pisses people off. Poor Susan is often treated as an adjudicator of word arguments (is it really aitch or haitch? Should anyone be allowed to use impact as a verb? Why is man boobs even in the dictionary?) when her true role is to document Australian English.

And document it she does, like a flat-out legend. Look at this video of her TED Talk at the Opera House:

Susan is surprisingly zen about pedants who hate myriad as a noun, for instance, or who feel that she should be more decisive about whether a scallop is a potato cake or a marine bivalve mollusc of the family Pectinidae. ‘We should have greater tolerance of the choices made by others.’ What a smart, friendly person she is.

Harvard’s Steven Pinker is a psycholinguist, a mop-haired orator, a thinker of thoughts about language. He loves grammar; he loves style; he knows they’re different things. This book is a bitter pill for people who want the road to good writing to be paved with rules:

‘Although some of the rules can make prose better, many of them make it worse, and writers are better off flouting them. The rules often mash together issues of grammatical correctness, logical coherence, formal style, and standard dialect, but a skilled writer needs to keep them straight. And the orthodox stylebooks are ill equipped to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time. Language is not a protocol legislated by an authority but rather a wiki that pools the contributions of millions of writers and speakers, who ceaselessly bend the language to their needs and who inexorably age, die, and get replaced by their children, who adapt the language in their turn.’

Getting your message across, earning trust, adding beauty to the world—that’s style, says Pinker. ‘This thoroughly impractical virtue of good writing is where the practical effort of mastering good writing must begin.’

The first thing you will learn reading this book, which collects essays, criticism and features from the first twenty-something years of American music critic Jessica Hopper’s career, is that its title is kind of a lie.

Before diving into an early profile of Chance the Rapper; a bemusing scene report of Coachella; a landmark deep-dive into the motivations behind Lana Del Rey’s ‘fake’ pastiche of Americana; an interview with Jim DeRogatis, the journalist who’s steadfastly investigated abuse claims against R Kelly for years; and a heralded essay on emo music’s total ambivalence towards the women who fuel the scene, Hopper acknowledges the female rock critics who came before her and plants a flag that declares the truth: despite how few of them have their work collected into volumes, women have been and always will be writing about music.

Chuck Klosterman is often cited as one of the best pop-culture commenters of all time, ever. He is an American dude who cut his teeth writing about music for Spin, Esquire and GQ. You might recognise him from the LCD Soundsystem documentary, in which he becomes increasingly frustrated while interviewing James Murphy.

Comments by staff reviewer Sinead Stubbins:

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs was published in 2003. Klosterman has published eight books in total, and the fact that this one is still relevant is a testament to his mad skill. Sometimes it’s hard to enjoy pop-culture writing removed from its context, but Klosterman gets at a human TRUTH that makes his work super-relatable no matter what TV show / song / ’90s pop star he’s talking about. I’ve read a few of his books but SDCP is my favourite—because rather than just discussing pop culture, he explores the ways we consume it. He whinges about the effect When Harry Met Sally has had on our collective romantic psyche, explains the paradox of Saved by the Bell and argues that Luke Skywalker was the original Gen X-er. Funny stuff!

I don’t always agree with Chuck Klosterman; in fact, sometimes his arrogance really annoys me. But being able to critically engage with a writer you like is often an indicator of how rich and complex their writing is. That talented bastard.

If you freaked out reading that New York Times article about how the full stop is on its way out, you might just love this book. Shady Characters is Keith Houston’s history of punctuation—from ancient Roman graffiti to the internet.

On some level, we should all know more about the @, the & and the * (we offer the following Guardian correction note as proof: ‘This article has been corrected. The original had “asterix” for “asterisk”.’ Haha! Get it together, Guardian), and Houston’s book is both info-packed and entertaining.

Overall, it’s a real head-check about how much punctuation has changed since humans began writing words. Houston covers the hyphen, the dashes (en and em), quotation marks (single and double), the pilcrow (¶), the interrobang (‽), the octothorpe (#), the manicule (☞, ☜), the dagger (†), the prodigal @ and more. 

It’s f*&^%¶# great!

This is a biography of William Maxwell Evarts Perkins—aka Max Perkins, aka ‘editor of genius’—written by A Scott Berg. Max Perkins is the most famous literary editor ever, and he wore a hat almost all the time. He edited Fitzgerald, Wolfe and Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea was dedicated to Max after he died in 1947) and discovered many other writers, including James Jones, Marjorie Yawlings and JP Marquand.

Comments by staff reviewer Meredith Forrester:

My favourite bit is on page 18, where Berg writes about how Perkins wouldn’t let the manuscript of This Side of Paradise out of his sight because it was his first project as an editor at Scribners and he’d fought very hard to get Fitzgerald on the books; ergo, hundreds of mistakes in the first print run because no proofreaders, and then a ‘witty’ guy from the New York Tribune made a game out of spotting them. Poor Max! Another favourite part is finding out about Max’s wife, Louise, in whose brain Max ‘foresaw and welcomed a lifelong battle of wits’. 

This book lives in my backpack because a) Rory Gilmore always carried a book in her backpack and b) I like knowing that Max is nearby whenever I need to kick some poorly written arse. It’s the best present for anyone who loves editing and literature and history and reading books that use unspaced em dashes.

David Marsh is the Guardian’s recently retired production editor and the former keeper of its common-sense style guide. He used to run the @guardianstyle Twitter account, too, and would smack people down with his grammar and style sass. His book For Who the Bell Tolls—probably named for this 2011 Guardian op-ed on who versus whom—is for sale here in our shop. It’s a great read if you’re interested in plain English and want to learn from David’s experiences writing for newspapers. Some people have called him harsh, but David Marsh is a wise and wonderful writer.

Right now pedants are prowling the internet, passing out wolf tickets for grammar crimes. Hating on new words, poo-pooing new uses for old ones. But what are they enforcing, really? Conventions that are being superseded.

‘English,’ says Oliver Kamm, author of this book and an editor at the Times of London, ‘reflects what its users say and write rather than arbitrary judgments of correctness.’ The pedants mistake linguistic change for impoverishment. They spout folklorish superstitions while fossilising themselves in the era when among was amongst and that was that.

Is Mr Kamm too permissive? Maybe, says the Guardian. But his book’s historical tour of grammar and style proves (as the publisher’s sales pitch promises) that ‘many of the purists’ prohibitions are bogus and can be cheerfully disregarded’.

If you desire a once-and-for-all explanation (or even just some context) for those ‘grammar rules’ you keep hearing, this book will boost your confidence and arm you with retorts. If you are the one who spouts the rules, heed James Shapiro, professor of English at Columbia University:

‘Pedants are going to hate this book—and quietly take its lessons to heart.’

The first thing you should know about this book is that it’s available online for free as a PDF download. It’s the CIA’s style manual, eighth edition, de-classified in 2012, known formally as the Directorate of Intelligence Style Manual and Writers Guide for Intelligence Publications. We were at Officeworks one day and decided to print it out on pink paper and pay for some classy red binding. That’s all you’re really shelling out for here. You should also know that the font size came out quite small but that’s just the excuse you need to whip out the ol’ magnifying glass—right, Harriet the Spy?

Want to know how to capitalise the Free World, the Contras and the Group of Eight? What about that series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War? (Use Scud, not SCUD.) Want some good old-fashioned style decisions on the serial comma, the colon, indefinite articles with consonants and vowels, and the avoidance of apostrophes in plurals (Boeing 747s, MiGs, the 1980s)? It has that stuff as well!*

*Because intelligence reports are expected to be dispassionate, this punctuation mark should rarely, if ever, be used.

This t-shirt features a portrait of Penny Modra accompanied by the words ‘stay nervous’.

Part of what makes Penny such a great writer and editor is how she applies the same intense focus and anxiety to everything she does. Regardless of whether it’s an Instagram post, a petty cash receipt or a feature for The Guardian, Penny gives it her all. ‘Stay nervous’ is her slightly fatalistic way of explaining this approach. It’s a reminder that something could go wrong at any time.

Joanna Anderson is the artist whose illustration graces this t-shirt. We approached Joanna for the job because we like her work. Lucky she agreed to do it; otherwise we would’ve had to draw it ourselves. That wouldn’t have looked so good.

This is an AS Colour t-shirt. The sizes are standard adult men’s, and they run true to size.

This tote features a portrait of Penny Modra accompanied by the words ‘stay nervous’.

Part of what makes Penny such a great writer and editor is how she applies the same intense focus and anxiety to everything she does. Regardless of whether it’s an Instagram post, a petty cash receipt or a feature for The Guardian, Penny gives it her all. ‘Stay nervous’ is her slightly fatalistic way of explaining this approach. It’s a reminder that something could go wrong at any time.

Joanna Anderson is the artist whose illustration graces this tote. We approached Joanna for the job because we like her work. Lucky she agreed to do it; otherwise we would’ve had to draw it ourselves. That wouldn’t have looked so good.

These totes are well-suited to people who like to carry things in bags. I'll tell you what else: they have two handles each. They are made of nice, thick white cotton canvas and are screen-printed here in Melbourne by All of the Above.

The specs: Genuine ceramic mug. White with a blue print. Two holes only (top and handle). Perfect size (large). Office style. Lovingly machine-made. The print faces out when you hold the mug in your right hand, which is great for lefties who like to do two things at once. Illustration by Tim Lahan. Design by Smalltime Projects.

Comments by staff reviewer Max Olijnyk: 

I think the things you touch and look at every day should give you good vibes. Take mugs, for instance. Sure, your mug works just fine, but every time you pick it up you think, Yep, here’s that boring mug. Here we go again. What’s the point? Our mugs break that grim cycle. Alabaster white, Lumbergh chic, thin-rimmed for optimum mouth feel, emblazoned with a whacky Tim Lahan illustration reminding you to ‘keep it together’ … it’s a good vibe.

Hold your torso together with this remarkable garment.

This t-shirt is manufactured from pure cotton by the good folk at AS Colour. Next, it is shipped to Australia and kept in storage. Then, we purchase it in bulk. The next few steps are complicated: We supply computer-generated designs of Tim Lahan’s artwork to the screen printers. Following a protracted period of negotiations and changes (we’re pretty indecisive), the artwork meets the t-shirt by way of ink, squeegee and silk. Then, it dries. Then, it’s pressed. Then (we can’t be bothered coming up with another way of saying ‘then’), the screen printers email or text to let us know that our order is ready. All that remains to be done is for us to borrow Mel’s car, drive to the screen printers, park in a No Standing zone, walk in and chat for a while, and then pack the boxes into the car, drive back to work, count all the t-shirts, put little size tags on them, take some photos of them, upload the photos, write this, publish it, and then kick back and listen to some tunes. Maybe get a sandwich.

Anyway, it’s a great-looking t-shirt. Standard adult men’s sizes, true to size. Chest pocket and back print.

Hold your torso together with this remarkable garment.

This t-shirt is manufactured from pure cotton by the good folk at AS Colour. Next, it is shipped to Australia and kept in storage. Then, we purchase it in bulk. The next few steps are complicated: We supply computer-generated designs of Tim Lahan’s artwork to the screen printers. Following a protracted period of negotiations and changes (we’re pretty indecisive), the artwork meets the t-shirt by way of ink, squeegee and silk. Then, it dries. Then, it’s pressed. Then (we can’t be bothered coming up with another way of saying ‘then’), the screen printers email or text to let us know that our order is ready. All that remains to be done is for us to borrow Mel’s car, drive to the screen printers, park in a No Standing zone, walk in and chat for a while, and then pack the boxes into the car, drive back to work, count all the t-shirts, put little size tags on them, take some photos of them, upload the photos, write this, publish it, and then kick back and listen to some tunes. Maybe get a sandwich.

Anyway, it’s a great-looking t-shirt. Standard adult men’s sizes, true to size. Chest pocket and back print.

This is a cotton crewneck jumper with raglan sleeves. Raglan is a great word, we think. This jumper (or sweater, or windcheater—whatever you prefer to call it) has a print on the front of it. The artwork is by a fellow named Tim Lahan, an artist from America. We really like his work. ‘Hold it together’ is a bit of a catch-cry for us here at The Good Copy. The vibe is that you acknowledge that things get a bit desperate sometimes, especially if you expose yourself to the challenges and pressures of life. And acknowledging that things are hard—that what you do is difficult—is empowering. Holding it together and keeping on going is the only way forward. At least we think that’s what it’s about.

The jumper is made by AS Colour. It comes in standard adult men’s sizes that run true to size. If you don’t sweat too much, grey is a great choice.

This is a cotton crewneck jumper with raglan sleeves. Raglan is a great word, we think. This jumper (or sweater, or windcheater—whatever you prefer to call it) has a print on the front of it. The artwork is by a fellow named Tim Lahan, an artist from America. We really like his work. ‘Hold it together’ is a bit of a catch-cry for us here at The Good Copy. The vibe is that you acknowledge that things get a bit desperate sometimes, especially if you expose yourself to the challenges and pressures of life. And acknowledging that things are hard—that what you do is difficult—is empowering. Holding it together and keeping on going is the only way forward. At least we think that’s what it’s about.

The jumper is made by AS Colour. It comes in standard adult men’s sizes that run true to size.

Behold: we have created a crossword-print headband. What would be the point of owning one, other than to look like the hippest square on your street? No point. No point at all.

Each headband is one metre long and four centimetres wide. The cotton was printed to order using water-based inks; the headbands were sewn and ironed by Collingwood Crossword Club members working late into the night; the result spoke for itself. (It was a box of crossword-print headbands.)

If you want to join Crossword Club, see our calendar for upcoming dates. We meet every month on one Sunday or another.