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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A sharp, funny grammar guide they’ll actually want to read, from Random House’s longtime copy chief and one of Twitter’s leading language gurus

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • Paste • Shelf Awareness

“Essential (and delightful!)”—People

We all write, all the time: books, blogs, emails. Lots and lots of emails. And we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help.

As Random House’s copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike—not to mention his followers on social media—for deconstructing the English language with playful erudition. Now he distills everything he has learned from the myriad books he has copyedited and overseen into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward.

As authoritative as it is amusing, Dreyer’s English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en dash; the rules and nonrules of grammar, including why it’s OK to begin a sentence with “And” or “But” and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it’s best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including “very,” “rather,” “of course,” and the dreaded “actually.” Dreyer will let you know whether “alright” is all right (sometimes) and even help you brush up on your spelling—though, as he notes, “The problem with mnemonic devices is that I can never remember them.”

And yes: “Only godless savages eschew the series comma.”

Chockful of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people’s prose, and—perhaps best of all—an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

Praise for Dreyer’s English

“Playful, smart, self-conscious, and personal . . . One encounters wisdom and good sense on nearly every page of Dreyer’s English.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Destined to become a classic.”—The Millions

“Dreyer can help you . . . with tips on punctuation and spelling. . . . Even better: He’ll entertain you while he’s at it.”—Newsday

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From the Publisher

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Interwoven with cultural history and lively self-revelation, this bracing manual will up your game even if all you’re writing is emails.”—People (Book of the Week)

“Call it the hedonic appeal. Dreyer beckons readers by showing that his rules make prose pleasurable. . . . His book is in love with the toothsomeness of language. Its sentences capture writing’s physicality.”—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

“Brimming with wit and revelatory wisdom, this style manual-cum-linguistic jubilee from Random House’s copy chief . . . entertains as it enlightens.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“Random House copy chief and managing editor Benjamin Dreyer is a fixture in the publishing industry and on Twitter for his authoritative yet approachable take on style and grammar. Now he is a Random House author himself. . . . Dreyer’s English [is] a helpful, funny style guide replete with supporting references from literature and popular culture.”—New York

“An utterly delightful book to read, Dreyer’s English will stand among the classics on how to use the English language properly.”—Elizabeth Strout

“A mind-blower—sure to jumpstart any writing project, just by exposing you, the writer, to Dreyer’s astonishing level of sentence-awareness.”—George Saunders

“Farewell, Strunk and White. Benjamin Dreyer’s brilliant, pithy, incandescently intelligent book is to contemporary writing what Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry was to medieval English: a gift that broadens and deepens the art and the science of literature by illustrating that convention should not stand in the way of creativity, so long as that creativity is expressed with clarity and with conviction.”—Jon Meacham

“It is Benjamin Dreyer’s intense love for the English language and his passion for the subject that make the experience of reading Dreyer’s English such a pleasure, almost regardless of the invaluable and practical purpose his book serves in such dark and confusing times for grammar and meaning.”—Ayelet Waldman & Michael Chabon

“If Oscar Wilde had wanted to be helpful as well as brilliant, if E. B. White and Noël Coward had had a wonderful little boy who grew up to cherish and model clarity, the result would be Benjamin Dreyer and his frankly perfect book. Anyone who writes anything should have a copy by their computer, and perhaps another on the nightstand, just for pleasure.”—Amy Bloom

“Dreyer’s English is essential to anyone who cares about language. It’s as smart and funny as Dreyer is himself. He makes you smile and makes you smarter at the same time.”—Lyle Lovett

“Like Dreyer himself, this book reassures as it teaches. The reader never feels spoken down to, as in so many other style guides, but is instead lifted up, inspired to communicate with more clarity and zing. I’ll be buying this for friends.”—Brian Koppelman, co-creator and showrunner of Billions

“This work is that rare writing handbook that writers might actually want to read straight through, rather than simply consult.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House. He began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. In 1993, he became a production editor at Random House, overseeing books by writers including Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub, and Calvin Trillin. He has copyedited books by authors including E. L. Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Strout, as well as Let Me Tell You, a volume of previously uncollected work by Shirley Jackson. A graduate of Northwestern University, he lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: By Way of Introduction xi

part i The Stuff in the Front 1

chapter 1 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose) 3
chapter 2 Rules and Nonrules 6
chapter 3 67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation 20
chapter 4 1, 2, 3, Go: The Treatment of Numbers 67
chapter 5 Foreign Affairs 74
chapter 6 A Little Grammar Is a Dangerous Thing 84
chapter 7 The Realities of Fiction 102

part ii The Stuff in the Back 127

chapter 8 Notes on, Amid a List of, Frequently and/or Easily Misspelled Words 129
chapter 9 Peeves and Crotchets 147
chapter 10 The Confusables 166
chapter 11 Notes on Proper Nouns 210 x
chapter 12 The Trimmables 242
chapter 13 The Miscellany 252

OUTRO: By Way of Conclusion 267
THINGS I LIKE 269
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 271
INDEX 279

Chapter 1

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose)

Here’s your first challenge:

Go a week without writing

• very

• rather

• really

• quite

• in fact

And you can toss in—or, that is, toss out—“just” (not in the sense of “righteous” but in the sense of “merely”) and “so” (in the “extremely” sense, though as conjunctions go it’s pretty disposable too).

Oh yes: “pretty.” As in “pretty tedious.” Or “pretty pedantic.” Go ahead and kill that particular darling.

And “of course.” That’s right out. And “surely.” And “that said.”

And “actually”? Feel free to go the rest of your life without another “actually.”

If you can last a week without writing any of what I’ve come to think of as the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers—I wouldn’t ask you to go a week without saying them; that would render most people, especially British people, mute—you will at the end of that week be a considerably better writer than you were at the beginning.

Clarification No. 1

Well, OK, go ahead and write them—I don’t want you tripping over your own pencil every time you compose a sentence—but, having written them, go back and dispose of them. Every single one. No, don’t leave that last one intact just because it looks cute and helpless. And if you feel that what’s left is somehow missing something, figure out a better, stronger, more effective way to make your point.

Clarification No. 2

Before you get all overwrought and but-but-but, I’m not saying never use them—go count the “very”s in this book. I’m merely asking you to skip them for a week. A single measly little week. Now, as a show of good faith, and to demonstrate that even the most self-indulgent of us can and should every now and then summon up a little fortitude, I hereby pledge that this is the last time you’ll see the word “actually” in this book.

For your own part, if you can abstain from these twelve terms for a week, and if you read not a single additional word of this book—if you don’t so much as peek at the next page—I’ll be content.

Well, no.

But it sounded good.

Chapter 2

Rules and Nonrules

I have nothing against rules. They’re indispensable when playing Monopoly or gin rummy, and their observance can go a long way toward improving a ride on the subway. The rule of law? Big fan.

The English language, though, is not so easily ruled and regulated. It developed without codification, sucking up new constructions and vocabulary every time some foreigner set foot on the British Isles—to say nothing of the mischief we Americans have wreaked on it these last few centuries—and continues to evolve anarchically. It has, to my great dismay, no enforceable laws, much less someone to enforce the laws it doesn’t have.

Certain prose rules are essentially inarguable—that a sentence’s subject and its verb should agree in number, for instance. Or that in a “not only x but y” construction, the x and the y must be parallel elements. (More on this in Chapter 6: A Little Grammar Is a Dangerous Thing.) Why? I suppose because they’re firmly entrenched, because no one cares to argue with them, and because they aid us in using our words to their preeminent purpose: to communicate clearly with our readers. Let’s call these reasons the Four C’s, shall we? Convention. Consensus. Clarity. Comprehension.

Also simply because, I swear to you, a well-constructed sentence sounds better. Literally sounds better. One of the best ways to determine whether your prose is well-constructed is to read it aloud. A sentence that can’t be readily voiced is a sentence that likely needs to be rewritten.

A good sentence, I find myself saying frequently, is one that the reader can follow from beginning to end, no matter how long it is, without having to double back in confusion because the writer misused or omitted a key piece of punctuation, chose a vague or misleading pronoun, or in some other way engaged in inadvertent misdirection. (If you want to puzzle your reader, that’s your own business.)

As much as I like a good rule, I’m an enthusiastic subscriber to the notion of “rules are meant to be broken”—once you’ve learned them, I hasten to add.

But let’s, right now, attend to a few of what I think of as the Great Nonrules of the English Language. You’ve encountered all of these; likely you were taught them in school. I’d like you to free yourself of them. They’re not helping you; all they’re doing is clogging your brain and inciting you to look self-consciously over your own shoulder as you write, which is as psychically painful as it is physically impossible. And once you’ve done that, once you’ve gotten rid of them, hopefully you can put your attention on vastly more important things.

Why are they nonrules? So far as I’m concerned, because they’re largely unhelpful, pointlessly constricting, feckless, and useless. Also because they’re generally of dubious origin: devised out of thin air, then passed on till they’ve gained respectable solidity and, ultimately, have ossified. Language experts far more expert than I have, over the years, done their best to debunk them, yet these made-up strictures refuse to go away and have proven more durable than Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Put together. Part of the problem, I must add, is that some of them were made up by ostensible and presumably well-meaning language experts in the first place, so getting rid of them can be a bit like trying to get a dog to stop chasing its own tail.

I’ll dispatch these reasonably succinctly, with the hope that you’ll trust that I’ve done my homework and will be happy to see them go. I’m mindful of Gertrude Stein’s characterization of Ezra Pound as “a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not,” and no one wants to be that guy. Also, if you persist in insisting that these nonrules are real and valid and to be hewed to, all the expert citations in the world won’t, I know through experience, change your mind one tiny little bit.

An admission: Quite a lot of what I do as a copy editor is to help writers avoid being carped at, fairly or—and this is the part that hurts—unfairly, by People Who Think They Know Better and Write Aggrieved Emails to Publishing Houses. Thus I tend to be a bit conservative about flouting rules that may be a bit dubious in their origin but, observed, ain’t hurting nobody. And though the nonrules below are particularly arrant nonsense, I warn you that, in breaking them, you’ll have a certain percentage of the reading and online-commenting populace up your fundament to tell you you’re subliterate. Go ahead and break them anyway. It’s fun, and I’ll back you up.

The Big Three

1. Never Begin a Sentence with “And” or “But.”

No, do begin a sentence with “And” or “But,” if it strikes your fancy to do so. Great writers do it all the time. As do even not necessarily great writers, like the person who has, so far in this book, done it a few times and intends to do it a lot more.

But soft, as they used to say, here comes a caveat:

An “And” or a “But” (or a “For” or an “Or” or a “However” or a “Because,” to cite four other sentence starters one is often warned against) is not always the strongest beginning for a sentence, and making a relentless habit of using any of them palls quickly. You may find that you don’t need that “And” at all. You may find that your “And” or “But” sentence might easily attach to its predecessor sentence with either a comma or a semicolon. Take a good look, and give it a good think.

Let’s test an example or two.

Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had become accustomed to being lonely.

Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench, but she had become accustomed to being lonely.

Which do you think Betty Smith, the author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, chose? The former, as it happens. Had I been Smith’s copy editor, I might well have suggested the second, to make one coherent, connected thought out of two unnecessarily separated ones. Perhaps she’d have agreed, or perhaps she’d have preferred the text as she’d written it, hearing it in her head as a solemn knell. Authors do often prefer their text the way they’ve written it.

Here’s another, in two flavors:

In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Callendar would protect him, but the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever.

In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Callendar would protect him. But the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever.

This is E. M. Forster, in A Passage to India, and I suspect you’ll not be surprised to learn that version 2 is his. For one thing, version 1’s a bit long. More important, version 2, with that definitive period, more effectively conveys, I’d say, the sense of dashed expectations, the reversal of fortune.

These are the choices that writers make, and that copy editors observe, and this is how you build a book.

One thing to add: Writers who are not so adept at linking their sentences habitually toss in a “But” or a “However” to create the illusion that a second thought contradicts a first thought when it doesn’t do any such thing. It doesn’t work, and I’m on to you.

2. Never Split an Infinitive.

To cite the most famous split infinitive of our era—and everyone cites this bit from the original Star Trek TV series, so zero points to me for originality—“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

There’s much more—much more—one could say on the subject, but I don’t want to write about the nineteenth-century textual critic Henry Alford any more than you want to read about the nineteenth-century textual critic Henry Alford, so let’s leave it at this: A split infinitive, as we generally understand the term, is a “to [verb]” construction with an adverb stuck in the middle of it. In the Star Trek example, then, an unsplit infinitive version would be “Boldly to go where no man has gone before” or “To go boldly where no man has gone before.” If either of those sounds better to you, be my guest. To me they sound as if they were translated from the Vulcan.

Otherwise, let’s skip right to Raymond Chandler. Again, as with the Star Trek phrase, everyone loves to cite Chandler on this subject, but it’s for a God damn [sic] good reason. Chandler sent this note to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly in response to the copyediting of an article he’d written:

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

Over and out.

3. Never End a Sentence with a Preposition

This is the rule that invariably (and wearily) leads to a rehhash of the celebrated remark by Winston Churchill that Winston Churchill, in reality, neither said nor wrote:

“This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

Let me say this about this: Ending a sentence with a preposition (as, at, by, for, from, of, etc.) isn’t always such a hot idea, mostly because a sentence should, when it can, aim for a powerful finale and not simply dribble off like an old man’s unhappy micturition. A sentence that meanders its way to a prepositional finish is often, I find, weaker than it ought to or could be.

What did you do that for?

is passable, but

Why did you do that?

has some snap to it.

But to tie a sentence into a strangling knot to avoid a prepositional conclusion is unhelpful and unnatural, and it’s something no good writer should attempt and no eager reader should have to contend with.

If you follow me.

The Celebrated Ending-a-Sentence-with-a-Preposition Story

Two women are seated side by side at a posh dinner party, one a matron of the sort played in the old Marx Brothers movies by Margaret Dumont, except frostier, the other an easygoing southern gal, let’s say, for the sake of the visuals, wearing a very pink and very ruffled evening gown.

Southern Gal, amiably, to Frosty Matron: So where y’all from?

Frosty Matron, no doubt giving Southern Gal a once-over through a lorgnette: I’m from a place where people don’t end their sentences with prepositions.

Southern Gal, sweetly, after a moment’s consideration: OK. So where y’all from, bitch?

The Lesser Seven

I’m sure there are many more secondary nonrules than these seven, but these are the ones I’m most often asked about (or challenged on), so:

1. Contractions Aren’t Allowed in Formal Writing.

This may be a fine rule to observe if you want to sound as if you learned English on your native Mars, but there’s not a goshdarn thing wrong with “don’t,” “can’t,” “wouldn’t,” and all the rest of them that people naturally use, and without them many a piece of writing would turn out stilted and wooden. The likes of “I’d’ve” and “should’ve” are perhaps a bit too loosey-goosey outside casual prose, but generally speaking: Contractions are why God invented the apostrophe, so make good use of both.

Speaking of “should’ve”:

The Flannery O’Connor Flowchart

“should of”

↓

Are you Flannery O’Connor?

↓↓

YesNo

↓↓

“should have”

The correct construction is “should have” (also “could have,” “would have,” etc.). If you are not Flannery O’Connor, or Zora Neale Hurston, or William Faulkner, and you wish to convey the particular sound of a particular character’s speech—and I warn you up front, more on it later, about the dangers of phonetic dialogue—please avail yourself of “should’ve,” “could’ve,” “would’ve,” and so forth. They sound precisely the same, no one will yell at you, and we’ll all be a lot happier.

2. The Passive Voice Is to Be Avoided.

A sentence written in the passive voice is one whose subject would, in a sentence constructed in the active voice, be its object. That is:

Active Voice: The clown terrified the children.

Passive Voice: The children were terrified by the clown.

In a sentence written in the passive voice, the thing that is acted upon is frontloaded, and the thing doing the acting comes at the end. In either case, we can easily agree that clowns are terrifying.

Often, in a sentence constructed in the passive voice, the actor is omitted entirely. Sometimes this is done in an attempt to call attention to a problem without laying blame (“The refrigerator door was left open”) and sometimes, in weasel-like fashion, to avoid taking responsibility: “Mistakes were made,” for instance, which, uttered on various occasions by various Bushes, may well be the motto of that political dynasty.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (January 29, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812995708
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812995701
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1130L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.73 x 1.13 x 8.57 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #66,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #61 in Grammar Reference (Books)
- #84 in Words, Language & Grammar Reference
- #167 in Fiction Writing Reference (Books)

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Benjamin Dreyer

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Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House. He began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. In 1993, he became a production editor at Random House, overseeing books by writers including Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub, and Calvin Trillin. He has copyedited books by authors including E. L. Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Strout, as well as Let Me Tell You, a volume of previously uncollected work by Shirley Jackson. A graduate of Northwestern University, he lives in New York City.

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Jayne P. Bowers

Checking Cliches at the Door

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2019

Verified Purchase

At first it seemed amusing, or rather the Facebook banter about the book seemed amusing. Intrigued by a friend’s comments about her personal use of the exclamation point, I clicked the link she had posted to a New York Times article about Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. That title! I mean, it takes a lot of courage, confidence, and chutzpah to claim one’s guide as utterly correct.

I knew I had to have that book ASAP and ordered it that very hour. It arrived two days later, and I’ve been enjoying Dreyer’s writing ever since. Dreyer is funny but serious, knowledgeable but not pedantic, experienced but not condescending. I have a dogeared copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, an up-to-date edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, and two Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty) books, my favorite being The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl. Those are my go-to sources, so why did I order the ultimate guide and why am I liking it so much?

I ordered it because whether editing my own work or someone else’s, I need all the help I can get. And I want that help to be delivered by a practicing expert, one who walks the talk, someone like Dreyer who’s the copy chief at Random House. Dreyer’s English is an invaluable tool, a veritable treasure chest of information, some new and some old. As a person who’s worked thirty years as a copy editor, Dreyer is committed not only to what he does for Random House authors but also to helping anyone who wants to improve their writing. (I’m not sure whether the correct pronoun should be his or her, his, her, or their so I stuck with the latter. For now, I’m sharing a few things I learned the first hour.

1. I need to use fresh terms. On the first page of Chapter 1, Dreyer challenges his readers to go one week without using very, rather, really, quite, and in fact. I gulped. Those are some of my most commonly used words. He goes on to recommend tossing out just, pretty, of course, surely, and that said. And that’s just on the first page. I’m in trouble, I thought. (Incidentally, Dryer doesn’t recommend the use of Italics when expressing a writer’s thoughts, but well, I’m in the learning stage.) It took only a few seconds to construct a silly sentence using six of those words/phrases. It would really be very hard for me to go just one day without writing these rather common words and quite impossible, in fact, to go a week.

2. I can use the Oxford if I so desire and ignore the know-it-alls who tell me it’s passé. Dreyer says, “Only godless savages eschew the series comma.” Whether you call it series or Oxford, use it. In the first of the two sentences below, I’m visualizing green beans folded into chocolate pudding. In the second, I see them as separate dishes. I prefer pudding as dessert, not part of a vegetable dish.
“For dinner, we’re having grilled pork chops, rice, green beans and pudding.”
“For dinner, we’re having pork chops, rice, green beans, and pudding.”

3. Certain prose rules are essentially inarguable. For instance, a subject and verb should always agree in number. At the same time, he claims to be an “enthusiastic subscriber” to the concept that rules are made to be broken—once you’ve learned them. He shares a humorous story about a hoity toity person who gets her just reward after haughtily correcting someone who ended a sentence with a preposition. And if Dreyer says it’s okay to begin a sentence with And or But (he does), that’s good enough for me.

Throughout the book, there are rules (and softer guidelines), anecdotes, tips, examples, and fascinating footnotes. Dreyer delivers his message in a factual but fun way. Although the reader knows that he’s dead serious about the importance of grammar, punctuation, and word choice in making one’s writing clear and elegant, he makes his points without being dry or preachy.

I’m sure Benjamin Dreyer wouldn’t approve of the exclamation point after “That Title!” in the first paragraph, but to use a cliché (which he says to avoid like the plague), Rome wasn’t built in a day. From this day forward, I’ll be checking my exclamation points and clichés at the door.

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Noralee Burby

Delightful and Informative

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2024

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Dreyer's English was recommended by Grant and Martha who are the hosts of "A Way with Words" on NPR. This book has lived up to their glowing description. I am one who is seeks to improve my writing while keeping it lean as possible. Benjamin Dreyer has been a big help with a big heap of laugher along the way :)

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MrTechieGuy

Five Stars, But Not Perfect

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2019

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This is a great book, witty and packed with information and insight regarding written English. It is the only book I’ve ever read that, upon completion of my first (always careful) reading, I immediately returned to the beginning and re-read the whole thing even more carefully. Thank you, Mr. Dreyer, for your excellent work! Five stars, for sure.

But that’s not to say it is a PERFECT book. Indeed, given that this book was written by a top-notch copy editor, and given that it underwent review by at least one other top-notch copy editor, I was surprised to find myriad awkward phrases and other anomalies—even likely errors—in the finished product.

What follows is my nitpicky list of complaints. And remember, if God did not intend for us to nitpick, S/He/It would not have made it so much fun to nitpick!

Page 14:

“A sentence written in the passive voice is one whose subject would, in a sentence constructed in the active voice, be its object.”

This is a non-definition. If you flip “passive” and “active,” the sentence is still true, but it’s still a non-definition. (In the latter case, it’s a non-definition of a sentence in the active voice.)

Page 63:

“I’ve also seen attempted, in an attempt to style the last example, the use of multiple hyphens,”

Use of the base word “attempt” twice in four words!

Page 68:

“…it makes it easier for the reader to easily compare things…”

Use of the base word “easy” twice in a short phrase.

Page 96:

“Flipping restlessly through the channels, John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was playing on TCM.”

Was that supposed to be “TMC”—The Movie Channel, or “TCM”—Turner Classic Movies?

Page 116:

“In the event, I eventually realized…”

Use of event/eventually separated by just one word.

Page 149:

“…save yourself, as Jewish mothers have expressed it from time immemorial, the aggravation?”

Why the question mark? Is this a cultural joke that’s too sophisticated for my simple comprehension?

Page 182:

“… ‘disassociate’ gets a lot of rocks thrown at it; I can’t say that it bothers me.”

To what does the second “it” refer? Is it the word “disassociate,” or is it the getting “a lot of rocks thrown at it.” I originally read this as the latter, meaning the Mr. Dreyer disapproves of the word “disassociate.” But then, maybe it’s the former, meaning Mr. Dreyer approves of “disassociate.” I dunno.

Page 189:

In the section on Gibe/Jibe/Jive, Mr. Dreyer failed to give a definition for “Jive.”

Page 210:

In Chapter 11, “Notes on Proper Nouns,” the subsection headings (e.g., “Bud Abbott”) are shown in all-upper-case font (“BUD ABBOTT”), with actual upper case letters indicated by a SLIGHTLY larger font that is easy to miss. Since many of the issues addressed in this chapter involve when, and when not, to use upper case, this represents a particularly inappropriate typesetting decision.

Page 221:

“See also ‘irony,’ this page.”

The phrase “this page” is a hotlink back to Mr. Dreyer’s section on irony. The trouble is, I completely failed to see any connection between the reference (irony) and the topic of this subsection (a mysterious person named Alanis Morissette). Then I googled the name and found out that Ms. Morissette has a song called “Ironic.” Ha ha. (I mean, aren't some jokes just too lame to make it into print?)

Page 263:

“A reversal is a total 180.”

But in the corresponding footnote 10, on page 264, Mr. Dreyer asks, “Is the term ‘full 180’ tautological?” Either the word “total” or the word “full” should be used in both places. I mean, you want to make the text and the footnote matchy-matchy, right?

Page 263:

“‘Stupider’ and ‘stupidest’ are too words.”

What a head scratcher! I showed this to my wife and she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, either. Should that be “two” instead of “too”? But that would transform the sentence into a pointless statement of a trivial fact. What on Earth was Mr. Dreyer trying to communicate here?

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Darshana Balakumaran

Detailed and delightful

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2023

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This is a book for communicators, writers, and anyone who enjoys the nuances of English. I found myself chuckling at some paragraphs, and nodding my head in agreement with others.

It requires attentiveness when reading. It can be easy to miss details if read without the right mindset.

A thorough and delightful read, especially fir bookworms like me.

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booklover

Should I be surprised by how well written this is?

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2023

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Dreyer's English is a pleasure to read, filled with useful information, and not in the least bit old school. It addresses what it says it will: clarity and style. Dreyer begins by pointing out all the questionable rules that most writers ignore and prompt us to get rid of words that many of us use all the time. It is filled with useful writing information in the most lighthearted and fun way. Great read!

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Debodacious

Utterly satisfying!

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2024

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This is a gem of a book. The author has a sharp, dry wit that is utterly satisfying. He explains how our language is changing, and tells us how and when it makes more sense to break those ancient rules of usage that land us in awkward sentence pretzels.

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the hermit bookworm

Dreyer is a literary rebel!

Reviewed in Canada on March 4, 2024

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This book has be incredibly useful. My writing from after I read this required significantly less editing than before.

It was also a delight to read; straightforward, honest, and laced with wry humor. I loved his tenancy to illustrate each point by breaking the rule he was trying to instill.

It deals mostly with line edits and sentence level issues, and the occasion scene problem rather than the larger ones that developmental edits would tackle.

Casey

utterly wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2024

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If Stanley Tucci had written a book about grammar - I reckon it would turn out a bit like this.

This book was recommended to me and to be honest, I wasn't sure I would enjoy - I mean, who DOES enjoy reading about oxford commas and the value of a semi-colon?

But this book is so lightly, cleverly written I'm reading it twice - once for the pure enjoyment and the second time to digest the learning. Fabulous.

Kindle-Kunde

Reply to cyrus

Reviewed in Germany on April 10, 2020

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Thank you for mentioning Norris. But this is the only good thing about your critic, which is great writing but missing facts. I was buying over 200 hundred books for learning style for my native German, for English, for learning French, Italian, and even Danish to get the hang of it, only Dreyer did it, my hope, finally. You could prevent others from this experience. Dangerous for the seeker. Norris is 5 stars, but can't be compared. And nothing wrong with chapter 7. So for you: “Dismissed,” I make my dirty face.

randomsubu

An excellent guide to writing - and funny!

Reviewed in France on February 21, 2019

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I am only part-way through the book, but I look forward to reading it every day. It is a given that the copy chief of Random House knows his craft and will not steer you wrong. But he is also funny and incisive. This is no dry grammar instruction manual; instead, Dreyer's English is quite the entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Miguel D.

ENtretenido, divertido y muy útil

Reviewed in Spain on March 26, 2019

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Perfecto manual para mejorar tu inglés escrito, da gusto leerlo y trata muchos temas. Complemento perfecto para los manuales de gramática, o por el simple placer de leerlo.

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