I'm a young Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

And today we're going to have an especially fun conversation with Ellen Joven, famous

for the grammar table and now with a new book out called Rubble with the Clause.

Welcome, Ellen.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm sitting in the grammar empire, I feel like.

Oh, I know. I know we both have our bookcases behind us, the required wordy person Zoom background.

So for people who don't know, which hopefully isn't too many people, but tell people a little

bit about the grammar table and then your book.

Well, the grammar table is almost four year old project that they began in 2018.

It's literally a folding table that I got for like $40 and I unfolded it and stuck a grammar

table sign on it and then waited to see what would happen and people came up and asked

me grammar questions right away.

Not exclusively grammar necessarily, you know, ends up being pretty wide ranging about language,

but they come up and ask me questions where they file complaints.

You know, some people are a little bit annoyed about certain things or we just shoot the

breeze about language.

Yeah.

So, okay, actually, before we get to the book, I have to ask you, this was my first thought

when I very first heard about your what you were doing.

What on earth possessed you to put a table out on the street to talk to people about grammar?

I really wish that I could track exactly what happened in my brain, but you know, I live

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