Books and topics covered
The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
A Little Book of Language
Dreyer’s English
Collins Complete Writing Guide
Waterhouse on Newspaper Style
Quotations
Thesauruses
Dictionaries
Style Guides
The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
As I was humming and hawing about a suitable subject for an article, out of the blue popped up a reference to this book. “Great Scott!”, I declared. “This is something I could get my teeth into. I’ll give it a fair crack of the whip.”
As you may have gathered, I’ve been enjoying delving into the meaning of some of the expressions we come across all the time — and a few we don’t (or at least, I haven’t). Indeed, each time I discover a new phrase, I trip the light fantastic.
I’m impressed with this book for several reasons. Firstly, it has, so far, delivered the goods every time I’ve consulted it about a particular expression.
Secondly, it includes some Americanisms, which I think is particularly useful. Sometimes I find myself reading an American article and not understanding it fully because of its use of American idioms.
Thirdly, many of the entries include examples of where the expression has been used (not the first recorded use as far as I can tell).
Finally, although the entries are in alphabetical order, which is very useful in itself, there is also an index of themes at the back of the book. This is great if you’re looking to spice up your writing with an apt expression. Do bear in mind, though, that those of us who are a bit long in the tooth tend to get bent out of shape when there’s too much of a good thing.
Verdict: A brilliant addition to your reference collection.
A Little Book of Language
By David Crystal
It's always been my contention that practitioners should know as much about what they do as possible. When I was a teacher, I encouraged my students to read around the subject, and not just read enough to be able to answer examination questions.
I feel the same about writing. I realise that we can't all be experts at everything concerning writing, but having a broad knowledge of language seems to me to be fairly important.
From the title, you might think this book is all about clauses and apostrophes and split infinitives. Nothing of the kind. It includes such diverse topics as how we learn to communicate, spelling rules, slang, texting, dying languages -- the list goes on.
In keeping with everything I've read of David Crystal's, the text is steeped in knowledge without banging you over the head with technicalities.
It's not a new book -- it was published over ten years ago -- and so its chapter on political correctness comes across as slightly dated. Basically, it fails to anticipate the vitriol that is often in evidence these days. It does, however, give a very balanced account of the political correctness minefield, and realistically leaves it to the next generation to decide whether or not it's gone too far.
The chapters appear in an order that lends the book to being read chronologically, but it works equally well just to dip in.
It's a little disappointing that the book doesn't have an index. Nevertheless, it's short, readable and contains a wealth of useful (background) information for any writer.
Dreyer’s English
By Benjamin Dreyer
Wend your way to the writing section of any half-decent bookshop, and you will find several books on the correct way to use English. I even have a few myself, as you can see from the photo at the top of this newsletter edition. A brief perusal of the ones in the shop will persuade you that these tomes come in several categories:
Worthy and boring.
Worthy and interesting.
Worthy, interesting and humorous.
Boring.
Useless and boring.
Useless, boring and probably incorrect.
Useless, boring, incorrect and written by someone who has no particular authority in this area, unless speaking and writing in English are enough.
Until now, the only book I’ve found in the third category has been Collins’ Writing Guide (see below). However, I now find myself having to add an eighth category:
Worthy, interesting, humorous and readable in the sense of making you want to read it from cover to cover.
The author, Benjamin Dreyer, has been a copy editor at Penguin Random House in the USA for a couple of decades. Just in case you are British and that mention of America puts you off, don’t allow it to: this is the UK edition.
The humour comes through right from the start, with the author speaking to the reader, in effect. This is especially the case in the footnotes, such as this one, occasioned by his allusion to working with a famous film director:
It’s not name-dropping if I don’t drop the name, right?
The footnotes are worth mentioning in themselves: they remind me of the essays of David Foster Wallace. Wallace even has footnotes within the footnotes, and so does Dreyer (once, I think, but that still counts).
It’s not just the humour that raises this book above the average, and makes sections such as the easily-confused words bearable. Being a copy editor, Dreyer suggests ways in which you can change your sentences to avoid certain words (such as “very”) or dreadful convolutions. Moreover, he isn’t a pedant in the sense of insisting on rules that were never rules (for English) in the first place, such as the non-splitting of infinitives.
I’m not sure about a couple of his injunctions though, the ones pertaining to the capitalisation of the first letter after a colon, and when to use single as opposed to double quotation marks. He may be theoretically correct, but different people and indeed different countries have different views. Ingrained habits are difficult to break.
Dreyer’s English is not the only style guide you will need — indeed, the author himself recommends a couple of standard books. However, it is one that you will find yourself reaching for to clarify something — or when you need a bit of light relief from your own literary efforts.
Collins Complete Writing Guide
By Graham King
This is the book you wish you’d had in school. Yes, it has all the difficult grammar concepts — conjunctions, infinitives, dangling modifiers, adverbial phrases (though not the fronted adverbials included in the English National Curriculum’s Programme of Study) — but covered with copious examples and in a refreshingly lighthearted manner.
Unlike many grammar and usage books, his one is readable. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s enjoyable. One of the main reasons is its pragmatism. For example, after a generous paragraph about the good political correctness has done in expunging insulting terms from acceptable speech, it then provides a few examples of PC gone too far. The section ends with a plea to writers to be sensible and sensitive and to say what they mean.
Some parts are bound to raise a wry smile — or a groan. For example, ‘All things considered, avoid clichés like the plague’.
There are some very useful sections, such as the one on confusing words — which, strangely, does not include invidious/insidious. Another handy section is the one listing acronyms. The grammar rules are clearly explained, always with examples, which makes them comprehendible. Where there is a difference between British and American usage, the author points it out. In addition there are some marvellous box-outs, such as the one entitled ‘Who’s coming to Dinner, Supper, Lunch or Tea?’, which delves into the ‘gastronomic bizarreries of Britain’.
And should you really miss those school grammar lessons, there are plenty of tests to keep you occupied.
This is definitely a book that every writer should have on their shelves. It’s easy to find a problematic concept or word, and the advice is pragmatic rather than puritanical.
Collins Complete Writing Guide
Waterhouse on Newspaper Style
By Keith Waterhouse
I cover the subject of style guides below, but in the meantime here is a somewhat specialised one that provides the general reader with a kind of guide to ‘newspaper speak’.
Keith Waterhouse was a journalist and author. I first came across his name through his book, and the film of his book, Billy Liar. I discovered his writing some years later, through his column in the tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror.
I mention that latter fact because I think it important. People are often a bit snooty about the tabloids, but it's a snobbery born of ignorance. A newspaper that can make a complex topic like Brexit comprehensible to someone with a reading age of 11, which is a kind of benchmark for the tabloids, is doing a pretty good job. It takes real journalistic skill to achieve that.
The interesting thing, as Waterhouse points out in this book, is that although the tabloids write in simple terms, they are not condescending. For example, when a newspaper ran with the headline "Mucky Jim", it assumed that its readers would understand the reference to the Kingsley Amis novel, Lucky Jim.
'On newspaper style' started life as an in-house manual for journalists on the Daily Mirror. It was, in effect, the paper's house style guide. I'm glad it escaped the confines of Fleet Street because it is one of the best reference books I have read, and consult.
Some of it is humorous. For example, while the more salacious tabloids have headlines shouting about 'sex romps', nobody in everyday life talks about sex romps. In a chapter on 'Tabloidese' he makes a plea for using plain, normal English. For example, on Planet Tabloid, a criticism becomes a 'blast'; a drive (for or against something) is a 'blitz'; a mystery is a 'riddle'. Such drama in article after article is apt to leave one exhausted!
Waterhouse points out errors of use, such as when the second part of the sentence does not fit with the first half (for example, if you remove a subordinate clause, you would end up with a sentence that began "I have saw..."). I pride myself in trying to write well, but I've found since buying this book that I am much more sensitive to mistakes like that.
Although he is a stickler for correct English, Waterhouse is, I am pleased to say, not a stickler for what he calls 'Imaginary rules'. For instance, if splitting an infinitive makes a sentence easier to read and understand, then split it should be. It reminds me of (alleged) Churchill's statement: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.".
Organised in alphabetical order, Waterhouse On Newspaper Style may be read from beginning to end, or by dipping in to chapters at random. It may be over 30 years old, but much of the advice is as relevant today as it was then.
See below for a discussion of style guides in general.
General reference works
Quotations
Books of quotations are important, I think, for those odd occasions you need an apposite quote. And that phrase “odd occasions” is the rub: do you actually need to buy a reference book for occasional use when there is so much available on the web these days?
I think you do, for two reasons and a potential third.
First, on a purely pragmatic note, will you always have (or want) access to the web while you are writing? Some people deliberately closet themselves away from such “distractions” or use a word processor that takes over the whole screen so you can’t see the icon for internet browsing, or even disable their internet access completely while working. In any of these circumstances, a book (either digital or physical) is the only option.
Second, you have to be really careful about using websites for quotations, because different websites often give different versions of the same quotation. One thing to do is consult three websites in the hope that two of them will independently give the same version. Alternatively, use a source you can safely assume to be authoritative, such as the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or one of its variants.
The potential third reason is if you are looking for particular kinds of quotation. For example, you can buy books containing literary quotations, political quotations, death bed quotations and famous insults.
You can also choose between collections of quotations and collections of “modern” quotations (however defined)
On the subject of quotations, I had a look at collections of anecdotes recently. They were organised by the character involved rather than the subject matter. Thus if you wanted to look up anecdotes concerning Dr Johnson you’d be fine. However, if you wanted to look up anecdotes concerning a subject, such as politics, it would be more difficult. The relevance of this here is that it reminded me that I’ve also seen books of quotations organised by “quoter” rather than subject. In my opinion these are less useful than ones organised by subject, but your requirements may be different to mine. It’s worth bearing in mind that both types of book are available.
In fact, more than “both”. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is mainly organised by author, with a section called “Special Categories”. There is also a variant organised by subject, designed for students and teachers.
So, lots of choice, and it’s obviously impossible for me to recommend anything in particular because you know your needs better than I do!
Thesauruses
Before anyone tells me that the plural of “thesaurus” should “thesauri” rather than “thesauruses”, which is what I’d have thought myself, apparently it can be either, according to the Oxford dictionary.
I find a thesaurus to be indispensable on those occasions when the most appropriate word is on the tip of my tongue, but all I can bring to mind is a word that means something similar. (It’s interesting to me that such words are called “synonyms”, ie words which mean the same as each other. I don’t believe there are any synonyms, or not more than a few anyway. Even words that appear to mean the same thing have subtly different meaning in most cases.)
A really good thesaurus will give not only synonyms, but synonyms in the form of phrases as well as words.
Compare the following, for instance.
In the one on the left, several synonyms for “opposition” are given, but the one on the right is far richer, giving phrases like “the other side” as well. That one is Roget’s Thesaurus published by Penguin. It’s not as straightforward to use as some of the others available, but it’s much better in my opinion. I like it even better than the Oxford version, or indeed any other online thesaurus I’ve tried, because it is so comprehensive.
What I like about Roget’s too is that it gives the context for the different synonyms also, which helps you choose the right word. For instance, opposition in a political sense may be summed up in the word “challenge” or is variations, whereas the word “cussedness” would be completely misleading in that context.
Thesauruses (or thesauri) give antonyms too, making them an excellent multi-purpose resource for the writer.
Dictionaries
I don't care how good a writer you are, at some point you are going to need dictionary. Whether you need to check the meaning of a word, or the sort of context in which it’s used, or simply to double-check how it is spelt, you will want to use a dictionary. The question is, which one?
There are many dictionaries available, and even the standard ones like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tend to have several editions aimed at different audiences or covering different things.
Fortunately, you can try before you buy in effect, by using them online. In fact, you may find the online experience so good that you decide to not bother with owning one yourself at all. Personally, I like to have a physical dictionary in case I can’t gain access to the internet when I need to, and because I enjoy seeing other words I haven’t come across before.
The very best dictionary in my opinion is the complete Oxford English Dictionary. It gives full explanations of what words mean, and how they are used, and full etymological information as well, including extracts from the sources in which the word in question was first used.
There is also a protracted process by which new words make their way into the dictionary. This has the advantage that the dictionary carries real authority, and the disadvantage that very new words cannot be found in its pages. (The Second Edition, for example, was published in 1989.)
The OED is by far the definitive dictionary on the whole, though. If you are a member of a library which subscribes to the OED, you can gain access to the online version free of charge. The online version is, obviously, the most up-to-date, and is easily searchable.
A second-best is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which comprises two volumes. This is not cheap, being priced at over £70. It has served me well over the years, and I didn’t even have to pay for it. I was sent it free for trying out a book club. I belonged to the book club for a number of years. The good thing about those kind of offers is that even if you decide you don’t want to continue to be a member you are (usually) allowed to keep the free gift they send you when you first join or with your first order. However, it is worth noting that it was last published in 2007, which means it does not contain words coined since then.
Another excellent dictionary is Chambers. This is not as detailed as the ones mentioned so far, but is perfectly adequate for most purposes – as proven by the fact that many cryptic crossword compilers use Chambers as their main source of (unusual) words. It costs around £30.
You can access Chambers on the web. There you will be able to search a thesaurus and bibliography as well.
American readers would probably prefer the Merriam-Webster dictionary. This has American usage and spellings.
Of course, you can buy smaller editions of most dictionaries. As well as being cheaper, they are easy to carry around – and for most purposes will be perfectly OK.
If you want to know the meaning of the latest word on the street, or even to define one of your own, the Urban Dictionary is your first port of call. Be warned though: some of the language used in the definitions (or even the names of the people providing a definition) is not what you want your children to see. Also, for ordinary words it’s unreliable. For example, one of the definitions of ‘woman’ there is ‘female girl’ which is brilliant in its own way because it manages to be tautological, inaccurate and completely uninformative, all at the same time.
Whichever dictionary you use, bear in mind that it may have an implicit bias in one direction or another. For example, the pocket dictionary I had when I was school defined masturbation as self-abuse, which clearly reflected the attitudes of the time1. David Foster Wallace devoted an entire essay to implicit (political with a small ‘p’) bias in Authority and American Usage (pdf).
Style guides
There are two broad kinds of style guide. There is the generic type, containing advice on such things as whether to use “different from” or “different than”. And there is the specific type, ie specific to a particular publication. For example, should “internet” be spelled with a lower case “i”, or as “Internet”?. The specific style guide will tell you.
You need both types, of course, but unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as your needing only two books or two documents.
Generic style guides
When deciding on which style guides you need, there are several things to bear in mind.
First, the target readership’s country will make a difference. For instance, Americans tend to say “different than” while us Brits say “different from”. Another difference is that the British “I couldn’t care less” becomes transformed into the American “I could care less”. A third example is what happens after a colon. In British English the first word after a colon begins with a lower case initial letter, but in American English it starts with a capital letter.
If you’re writing for a print publication published in another country, it is pretty easy to deal with such differences. As long as you possess a style guide for that country, you’re high and dry. The real difficulty comes when you’re writing for a (potentially) international audience, such as on the internet.
Some people advise sticking to the style of the country in which the majority of your readers live. However, I think it is safer to stick with the style you’re most familiar with, which is probably that of your own country. That is more likely to guarantee consistency. I contend that it would be more annoying to readers to have an inconsistent style than to have just one style they may not prefer. You can learn to live with phrases and grammar that look odd, but it’s hard to come to terms with being continually jarred by changes in form.
Second, different style guides give different explanations and advice about the same thing. Take “different from” and “different to”. The Economist’s Style Guide says curtly: “Different from – not to or than”
Mind the Gaffe tells me that “different to” is OK in speech and colloquially, but not in in “careful writing”. (I shouldn’t have thought that people who write uncarefully would be bothered either way, but still.)
The Complete Plain Words says that “there is good authority for different to, but today different from is the established usage.”
Finally, Fowler’s Modern English – which incidentally I regard as my bible for this sort of thing – informs me that: “The fact is that the objections to different to, like averse to, sympathy for and compare to are mere pedantries. This does not imply that different from is wrong; on the contrary, it is ‘now usual’ (OED); but it is only so owing to the dead set made against different to by mistaken critics.”
The interesting aspects about this little exercise is that although (in this case) all of the guides agree that “different from” is to be preferred to “different to”, the last one mentioned gives me a much fuller explanation. It has also given me the confidence to use “different to” if I feel so inclined because, like the rule against splitting infinitives, the injunction to avoid “different to” is not some sort of divinely ordained law. I can break it if I wish to, brandishing Fowler’s lest anyone object.
Where there is no clear answer, such as when the style guides give conflicting advice, I would suggest using either the most authoritative, or taking the majority view.
What do I mean by “most authoritative”? Well, without wishing to upset anybody, of the Style Guides I’ve just consulted, I would say Fowler’s is the most authoritative because it has been around for ages. However, it is not necessarily the most up-to-date, so I think it may come down to a toss of the coin between The Complete Plain Words and The Economist’s Style Guide. The least authoritative, in my opinion, would be Mind the Gaffe. It’s a handy little book, modern, easy to read – but I’d never heard of the author, R Trask, until I picked up this book. In fact, the only reason I bought it was that it is published by Penguin, and I didn’t think they would publish rubbish.
So why buy other guides at all? Well, this brings me on to my third point. They all cover slightly different areas, or cover the same things in different ways.
For example, I love Fowler’s because of its unwillingness to pull punches, such as the comment about “mere pedantries”. It’s a great read in its own right.
Plain Words is organised differently, with a section, for example, on words to be handled with care (such as “transpire” which is almost universally used incorrectly). It also contains a section on verbs and one on punctuation.
Mind the Gaffe is slim and accessible and, as I said earlier, up-to-date.
The Economist’s offering includes such handy items as a list of abbreviations, a list of Roman numerals and, as you might expect from the Economist, a list of the world’s stock market indices.
Fourth, some style manuals contain an extensive amount of material which is not in others. The Oxford Style Manual falls into that category. It includes information relating to illustrations, copyright and different languages (eg in the section on French: “Unlike the English dash, [dashes in French] are never put close up to a word…”).
For these reasons, you ideally need at least three different style guides. As well as providing you with a wealth of different, though partly overlapping, guidance, with any luck you’ll find a majority two-to-one ruling in favour of something should there be differences of opinion.
Specific Style guides
It’s unfortunate that different publications have different styles and conventions, but they do, and if you write for third parties then you need to know what they are. The reason is very simple. Even if you write great copy, if the editor has to spend time correcting style errors which could and should have been avoided, he or she may think twice the next time they need an article penned.
So, look on the publication’s website, and if you can’ see a style guide, and are not given one, ask for it.
A conflict of views
What if the publication’s own style guide contradicts the generic style guides? The publication’s own guide must always win, even if you find the “correction” anathema.
After all, you do want the work, don’t you?
I hope you found this romp through reference guides for writers useful, or at least interesting. Please consider subscribing to this newsletter if you did.
I know this because the first thing my friends and I did when we acquired a new dictionary was look up all the ‘dirty’ words.
I'm bookmarking this one, Terry--thanks! Very helpful write-up!
Wow, thank you so much for such a great analysis of so many books, Terry - it's a treasure trove! I'm a fangirl of David Crystal - it's his fault that I chose to read linguistics at university.