This is a book about language as a rhetorical tool. It focuses on teaching and learning about grammar, usage, and punctuation through language play and experimentation in middle and secondary English classrooms.   With its emphasis on having students work with language in ways that develop their meta-linguistic awareness-showing them how we work language and how we make it work for us-this book looks at grammar, usage, and punctuation as rhetorical tools that function to enable us to play with language. By developing meta-linguistic awareness, it helps students become aware of meaning in context and to be aware of what happens to meaning when we use different grammatical structures, such as passive construction instead of an active construction. The presentation of the concept of sentence play, or sentence manipulation through a variety of avenues, helps students develop control over sentence complexity and sentence variation as related to purpose and audience. The book also emphasizes the role of reading in the development of command over written language.