Chris Baker - The Elements of F*cking Style: A Helpful Parody

Jacob Hansen:

To my beautiful wife, the Brain Club, and other assorted friends, family members, and hangers-on.

Chris Baker:

For my parents. And all the times they washed my mouth out with soap.

Table of Fucking Contents

Introduction, or How I Learned to Stop Writing Like a Three-Year-Old and Love Grammar

If only your mother could see you nowa book balanced nervously in your hands, your eyes scouring the corners of the room to make sure that none of your friends catch you reading. But dont fretwe promise not to reveal your secret. After who the hell knows how many years of formal education, it must feel pretty strange to be reading a grammar and style book, especially one with the word fucking in the title. Chances are that somewhere along the line you may accidentally have purchased another guide before locating this. If you did, it was most likely The Elements of Style, a widely distributed manual on grammar and usage that happens to be required by pretty much every college and high school English teacher on the planet. It has sold more copies than Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code combined, and is about as dry a read as the obituary section of your local newspaper.

The Elements of Style was first published in 1918. Think about that for a moment. In 1918, gay meant happy, opium derivatives were prescribed for headaches, and top hats and monocles were un-ironic fashion choices. In spite of this, teachers and parents persist in propagating this archaic little book for no other reason than its always been done that way. The truth is that you cant blame them. Grammar isnt a sexy subject, and Strunk and White, the same manual thats been prescribed since the dawn of the twentieth century, has done all it could.

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It is with this sentiment in mind that we introduce The Elements of F*cking Style: a guide to grammar, rhetoric, and style. Regardless of what a quick glance at Twitter might lead you to believe, we stand firmly by the notion that even in todays ever-changing world there is a need for grammar and a subconscious desire to follow the rules of writing. Its an inescapable factespecially as one exits childhood and enters young adulthoodthat its cool to be smart, fun to exercise a proclivity toward intelligent conversation, and an absolute necessity to be able to translate those skills into the written form.

How often have you logged into Facebook and seen someone mistake affect for effect or substitute your for youre ? The answer is that its happened often enough that we find ourselves writing these words in an honest hope that the art of intelligent writing will not die out in our lifetimes. Few of us can easily string together what passes for a coherent thought because the books teaching us are boring and dull, filled with useless and uninspired examples that only a few overachievers will bother committing to memory. For illustration, a rule from the original Elements :

Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.

The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is on foot.

The rule itself, of course, is still valid. The phrase unless you are pressed for time qualifies the original statement the best way to see a country is on foot, and is correctly placed between commas. But honestly, who the fuck is going to remember a rule based on that example? There are dozens of more interesting and colorful examples to disseminate this informationfor instance:

The easiest way to roll a joint, assuming you dont have a rolling machine, is to roll the paper around a Bic pen.

or

The best way to deflower a virgin, unless youre a sadist, is to bite down on her ear as you slide it in.

With a few short and concise sentences weve illustrated the grammatical rule and done it in a way that you might actually remember. You see, when learning is incidental rather than prescriptive its a whole lot easier and more enjoyable. Its easier to recite lines from Pulp Fiction than from, say, King Lear . That is the aim of this bookto guide you through the painful world of English grammar and style by using sex, drugs, and fucking swearing. Why? Because were into that shit.

I. Rules That Even Foreigners Should Know

1. Possession is more than a rap on the knuckles.

These rules are all pretty fucking simple. Most people learned these rules in the first or second grade, and as a result, most have forgotten them and look like idiots because of it.

Form the possessive form of nouns by adding s.

You add an s to the end of the word, no matter what the last consonant is. Consonants, in case youre unaware, are letters other than a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

Charless bong is fucking enormous.

Jimmys sex tape represented the low point in a lifetime of porn viewing.

Kellys vagina is completely shaved.

If brevity is your shtick, you can kill the second s and just leave the apostrophe when the noun already ends in s. This works wonders on Twitter.

Chris girlfriend lets him fuck her in the ass.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rulethings like ancient proper names, etc. Forget about that. This books purpose is to keep you from looking like an idiot, and if you find yourself debating whether to add an s to the end of Jesus, you can Google it.

The next topic is pronominal possessives, which is the fancy term for hers, its, theirs, yours, and ours . If youre using any of these words to replace a name

That dildo is Kellys.

That dildo is hers.

then it doesnt take an apostrophe. This is a simple enough rule, but where most people screw up is deciding whether to use its or its. Its should be used when you can substitute in a name or a different possessive and still understand whats going on. Example:

Its a lucky dog that is able to lick its own genitals, and the best I can do is the occasional stranger.

Its a lucky dog that is able to lick his own genitals, and the best I can do is the occasional stranger.

As you can see, replacing its with his still makes senseso its should be used. Generally speaking, because this is a politically correct society we live in, its should be preferred to his when you dont know the sex of whomever youre referring to. In the example above the dog could be a male or a female, so its should be used.

Its, on the other hand, is a contraction of it is. When you can replace its with it is, its is appropriate to use:

Its a fucking miracle anything gets done in this place with all the Madden you people play.

It is a fucking miracle anything gets done in this place with all the Madden you people play.

So now you know.

2. Commas are fucking fun.

In a series of three or more terms, use a comma after each term except the last. For example:

Shes got fake tits, nails, and hair.

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, and laughers.

HUNTER THOMPSON , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

3. Use commas to parenthesize shit.

This is the rule discussed in the introduction. When youre introducing information that qualifies or is otherwise an aside to the main topic, it should be placed between commas.

The easiest way to roll a joint, assuming you dont have a rolling machine, is to roll the paper around a Bic pen.

Admittedly, this rule can sometimes be difficult to applytheres some debate, for instance, over whether to put a single word in between commas:

Jason was a real prick, however, he seemed okay when he took uppers.

Now it is important to realize that if youre going to use commas in this way, they have to come in pairs. The pair of commas is like deciding whether to wear a tie to a meetingif you go with the tie, you have to wear a jacket as well or youll look like a tool. Same goes with commas.