Reddit reviews The Little, Brown Handbook

> I'm terrible at keeping abreast of current events around the world

The Middle East is a shit-show, a thousand different fragmented religious groups that all hate each other. Putin is taking over the frozen North. Europe is an interesting mix of quite well-off, stable countries and countries that are collapsing like the economic version of a flan in a cupboard. South America and Africa - third world, dont go there.*

> I know nothing about politics in my own country

As an American: Rob Ford, and you still have a Queen.

> or any country for that matter

Pick a country, then google it.

> my vocabulary and knowledge/use of grammar is subpar,

http://thesaurus.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Brown-Handbook-12th-Edition/dp/0205213073

> I don't know how to change a tire,

1. Obtain jack.
   
   
2. Locate your jack-point under your car (you cant just throw the jack anywhere, you will destroy your frame if its in the wrong spot) - look it up, Owner's Manual.
   
   
3. Use the wrench to loosen the lug nuts. May require significant force. Try not to do adjacent lug nuts after each other (dont go around in a circle, instead keep going across to the other side like a star). Righty tighty, lefty loosy.
   
   
4. Put something under opposite corner wheel, in front and behind it, as a wheel chock - something that the car cant roll over when you start to jack it (hehe) so that it cant roll.
   
   
5. Jack up car.
   
   
6. Take lug nuts off the rest of the way. Righty tighty, lefty loosy.
   
   
7. Pull wheel straight out from car to get it off bolts. Put new wheel or spare on by threading bolts into bolt holes on new wheel.
   
   
8. Put lug nuts back on same way you took them off.
   
   
9. Release the jack (instructions should be on jack, try it before you have the car up on it so that you know what to do).
   
   
10. Tighten bolts SUPER FUCKING TIGHT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T7xKcGb_70 Put everything away.
    
    > it doesn't occur to me to notify the government when my mailing address changes
    
    http://www.wikihow.com/Change-Address-when-Moving
    
    > I sometimes need to check recipes for stuff like making rice (seriously),
    
    Measure twice, cut once. Theres no shame in needing to check, and theres no need to waste brain space on things that can easily be checked.
    
    > and I don't know what the letters in a lot of important acronyms stand for (NASA, ATM, NATO, etc.)
    
    National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    
    Automated Teller Machine
    
    North Atlantic Treaty Organization
    
    > HoW dO I bEcoMe LesS StOopiD?
    
    Pretty much everything you listed can be solved by spending 5 minutes on google. Except the political stuff - people spend their entire lives studying politics and I bet most of them are still largely ignorant.
    
    *(Note: This is meant to be a comedic, very significantly oversimplification of complex and intricate international issues.)

> There is no "correct"

I dare you to say that to an English teacher, while they're clutching their copy of "The Little Brown Handbook."

"of" and "the" in those examples aren't capitalized because they're small and common.

To get more explicit about it, this convention is called "Title Case", and comes from titles of books. The convention is this: most are words capitalized, except articles (a/an/the), short prepositions (of, on), and short conjunctions (and, or, but)—except when they're the first word in the phrase.

So, "The Bible", "God the Father", "Of Mice and Men", "On the Origin of Soecies", etc.

If you've got a decent enough grasp of the language (which it seems you do), something like The Little, Brown Handbook might be a good reference (or read) for questions like this.

Chances are I could go through my own history and find them just as well. Honestly you're more likely to find a bunch of stupid typos like probable instead of probably unless we're evaluating things from a formal writing perspective. But as I said before, this isn't really a formal writing sort of setting. The only reason I said anything was that I find it irksome when someone attempts to point out grammatical imperfections in someone's writing but then they're flatly wrong in doing so and then proceeds to argue the most rudimentary form of sentence construction as a defense. Methinks you would be truly shocked to see what actually constitutes a grammatically correct sentence. For example one can construct a sentence using only the word buffulo. If you're going to snark back and someone you should at least be right. And if it's grammar you're after you should probably grab a copy of the Little Brown Handbook at a minimum.

EDIT: mixed up link formatting :|