Pinckert’s Practical Grammar: A Lively, Unintimidating Guide to Usage, Punctuation and Style <i> by Robert C. Pinckert Ph.D. (Writer’s Digest: $12.95; 232 pp.) </i>

Me and my friend Michelle had lunch the other day and it was, like, so totally far out to see her, ya know? She has, like, this totally new job in Florida now? I mean, we’re talking MAJOR promotion. . . .

No, I don’t usually talk this way, and neither does my friend Michelle, but a lot of Americans do. Many have trouble describing a lunch meeting in any other terms. It drives some of us up the wall; others “could care less.”

So many books harangue the misuse of our mother tongue, it’s refreshing to find one that says, “It’s OK.” That’s essentially the theme behind “Pinckert’s Practical Grammar.” But it’s a qualified OK--one that points to the pitfalls of grammatical negligence. You aren’t likely to see him endorsing “me and my,” unless, of course, it’s followed by “shadow.”

Robert C. Pinckert sees language as a game. It’s one we all play with varying degrees of skill, but no one is so good that the rest of us need to feel intimidated. He says, “The Game is much trickier and interesting than the one Miss Thistlebottom tried to teach you in the seventh grade.”

Pinckert’s purpose is to build confidence regardless of the reader’s previous experience in writing or speaking, and he succeeds. He devotes his entire first chapter to overcoming failure fears, and the rest of the book is so clearly written that it’s a model for his message. In effect, he is putting to rest the old joke that goes, “I’m not sure what he said, but didn’t he say it nicely?”

“Pinckert’s Practical Grammar” is not a textbook, although it should be. It’s not a typical “English book” either. For one thing, it’s enjoyable. When was the last time you read a grammar book cover to cover just for the fun of it? This is one you can--and probably should. “Practical Grammar” is a do-it-yourself course in modern English with no final exam to spoil the fun.

Although anyone who writes will find the book helpful, I doubt that Pinckert had writers in mind. His real audience is the non-writer, the person too timid to add a note to a greeting card, never mind compose a business letter. The person who doesn’t write anything because he hated English in school can take heart. Pinckert still hates the typical English class: “The way English is taught in schools today, it might as well be dead. It’s taught as if it were a written language. The children are not only taught that writing is different from speech but superior to it. This idea has to strike them as weird. . . .”

There are those among the ivory tower set who will undoubtedly think that Pinckert is a little weird. If there were no class distinctions to our language, where would that leave the profs and pros? “They shouldn’t worry,” he writes. “Formal is not about to disappear. The defenders of Formal remain powerful, and send to defeat any player in the Game who is ignorant or defiant of the rules. But the player who knows Informal as well as Formal will be better at Formal. Besides it’s plain un-American to be Formal.”

For those of us who operate in the vast gray area between academia and functional illiteracy, “Pinckert’s Practical Grammar” makes an excellent reference book. But, it’s more than that. It bridges the gap between the stuffy rules of yore and the more lively language habits of today. Pinckert also makes it a point to remind his reader that today’s lively habits can become tomorrow’s stuffy rules. (If a habit has been around long enough to become a rule, it’s probably out of date.)

As a technical scriptwriter, I justify questionable grammar because narration has to sound “normal” to the audience. I start sentences with the word but , leave out verbs, split infinitives and dangle my participles all over the place. I confess. There was a time when I didn’t know any better. Now I know better, and I still do it. It used to be called ignorance. After reading Pinckert, I like to think of it as style.