If the pinky-red glow emanating from Seasonal aisle at your grocery or drug store hasn’t gotten your attention, allow me to be a killjoy and remind you that there is one shopping month left until Valentine’s Day.
As you mull your options, might I suggest a gift for the wordie in your life? How about a four-pack of instructional grammar posters? You don’t even need to set foot in the Hallmark store.
I’m not quite sure how to describe The Oatmeal, except perhaps as an online treasure chest of satirical entertainment—blog posts, cartoons, quizzes and musings on assorted topics, including grammar and punctuation–and great merchandise.
For the reasonable price of $32, you’ll be sure to get a juicy Valentine smooch with a quartet of 18”x24” posters, including “How to use an apostrophe,” “How to use a semicolon,” “10 words you need to stop misspelling” and “When to use i.e. in a sentence.”
Or, if you’re expecting and haven’t chosen a nursery theme, this is the best thing to come along since Baby Einstein. Really, what’s the baby going to find more useful later in life, the theory of relativity or there/their/they’re?
Each poster includes a detailed and annotated diagram walking the viewer through the logic of the assigned topic.
If grammar isn’t your thing, you probably aren’t reading this blog, but consider The Oatmeal’s posters on other useful topics such as “15 things worth knowing about coffee,” “10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone,” “Why it’s better to pretend you don’t know anything about computers” and “6 reasons bacon is better than true love,” though you’d want to save that one for another occasion.
I’m thinking about ordering one for my home office: “Why working at home is both horrible and awesome.”
But the grammar pack is calling…
Word Nymph 