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.
