By Claire Davenport
Maybe you’ve read the best-seller Rebel With a Clause, or seen the docu-comedy of the same name at one of its many screenings by the Upper West Side’s New Plaza Cinema. Or, we hope, perhaps you’re a fan of Ellen Jovin’s essays on grammar in Rebel With a Clause: WSR Edition.
Besides talking grammar in her Rag column, her book, and the documentary, Jovin has traveled the country with the pop-up grammar advice stand that she first set up a few years ago in Verdi Square on the UWS. She can recite grammar rules to you, but she always encourages thoughtful flexibility. On the issue of the Oxford comma, for instance, a grammar point that prompts passionate for-and-against debate, “I can go either way,” Jovin revealed in her debut column for WSR last year.
Rag Radio’s Claire Davenport spoke with Jovin to learn how she became so fascinated with grammar. You can hear their interview at the link below; inevitably, it includes some analysis of the Oxford comma debate.
Music courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions. And for earlier installments of Rag Radio segments with West Side Rag contributors, listen to our interviews with Rob Garber, who does our Historical Photo Challenge every other Tuesday; Here’s the Dish author Abigael Sidi; Saturday columnist Yvonne Vávra; artist Robert Beck; Weekend columnist Tracy Zwick; cartoonist Gary Martin; photographer Steve Harmon; the authors of Ruthless Advice; Rag cartoonist Bob Eckstein; and WSR reporter Gus Saltonstall.
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