Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right - Bill Bryson

One of the English language's most skilled and beloved writers guides all readers toward precise, mistake-free usage. One of the English language's most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free grammar. As usual Bill Bryson says it best: English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where 'cleave' can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word 'set' has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; where if you can run fast you are moving swiftly, but if you are stuck fast you are not moving at all; and] where 'colonel, ' 'freight, ' 'once, ' and 'ache' are strikingly at odds with their spellings. As a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s, Bill Bryson felt keenly the lack of an easy-to-consult, authoritative guide to avoiding the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly suggested to a publisher that he should write one. Surprisingly, the proposition was accepted, and for a sum of money carefully gauged not to cause embarrassment or feelings of overworth, he proceeded to write that book--his first, inaugurating his stellar career. Now, a decade and a half later, revised, updated, and thoroughly (but not overly) Americanized, it has become Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words , more than ever an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. With some one thousand entries, from a, an to zoom, that feature real-world examples of questionable usage from an international array of publications, and with a helpful glossary and guide to pronunciation, this precise, prescriptive, and--because it is written by Bill Bryson--often witty book belongs on the desk of every person who cares enough about the language not to maul or misuse or distort it.