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| Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right
Paperback
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2004-09-14
ISBN-10: 0767910435
ISBN-13: 9780767910439
List Price: $12.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
One of the English language’s most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage.
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
A Toastmaster's reference book
| Customer Rating: | Bryson's dictionary of troublesome words is a delight for a Toastmaster. In out club we have debvated for a couple of years about the difference between poldium and lectern; Bruson explains it succinctly.
The book is also an excellent source for a word of the day and can also be used to suggest two words that are similar in ways but different as well. Great book for any wordsmith. |
Fun to read, and a good reference
| Customer Rating: | | This book is a light, fun read for people who enjoy the nuances of the English language and maybe would like to become better readers/writers/editors. I always have this book handy when I'm making editing corrections at work. While I don't consult it regularly, it has definitely clarified three or four things that I couldn't find explained clearly or concisely enough on the internet. Also, someone wrote a review about this book and claimed that it was obsolete because you can find everything that Bill writes about explained somewhere online. This may be true, but Bill's writing style is interesting, concise, thorough, and written colloquially enough to be easy to digest-- so you're more likely to retain this nuanced information of usages than trying to locate these things somewhere else. |
The Lost Continent
| Customer Rating: | | Rather mundane descriptive work. It is outdated by a quarter century. I would not recommend this book to anyone. |
Obsolete
| Customer Rating: | | Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words may have been useful twenty-five years ago, when it was first published, but it has become redundant. Most entries clarify word spellings and meanings, which a normal dictionary does just as well (with the advantage that it lists all words, not an arbitrary selection). A Google or Yahoo search will instantly clarify the rest, such as corporate names. Grammatical or stylistic advice is rarely given, and adds little to Strunk & White's better-organised and clearer The Elements of Style. And because of the dictionary format, that advice is buried in distant entries and hard to find. Nor does Bryson's manual lend itself to reading `like a novel', even if he wrote it with his customary humour. This is most likely to sit on your shelf. |
No problem for Bryson
| Customer Rating: | | I like language and its ability to allow the communication of complex and profound ideas as well as making it possible the get a coffee from Starbucks. This book, born out of Bryson's need for clarity as a newspaper reporter, is a wonderful read. Although laid out alphabetically like a conventional dictionary it is possible to dip into at any point and at any time to find oneself informed and amused. Plural of mongoose, mongooses not mongeese, fascinating and worth a bonus point in any trivia quiz. Oh, and Bryson insists there is no problem using split infinitives which is good news for Captain Kirk whose job is "to boldly go" to new worlds. In a world where standards seem to be slipping, (what is the difference between "verbal" and "oral", does anyone know, does anyone care: similarly "affect" and "effect") and where "eff off" gets marks in GSCE English we should be grateful for Bryson for keeping the language flag flying. Buy this please, I did and subsequently bought two further copies for friends. |
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