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 … 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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February 4, 2019: Of all of the marvelous insights and sly humor in Dreyer’s new book, my favorite is his meditation on the comma (as used in the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House:
“While we’re here, I’d also like to celebrate that paragraph’s final comma, perhaps my favorite piece of punctuation in all of literature. One might argue that it’s unnecessary—even grammatically uncalled for—but there it is, the last breath of the paragraph, the author’s way of saying, ‘This is your last chance to set this book down and go do something else, like work in your garden or stroll down the street for an ice cream cone. Because from this point on it’s just you, and me, and whatever it is that walks, and walks alone, in Hill House.’ I dare you to walk away.”
Arguably THE most important reference book for authors, Dreyer delivers a fantastically instructional and entertaining tome on the art of writing. A must-have for authors, regardless of your skill level, this book will do more to improve one’s writing ability than any other six references on the subject.
Who knew that a book on grammar and style could be so laugh-out-loud funny?
One usually doesn’t read a grammar book for fun, but I recommend this one for a light (but informative) refresher course filled with great anecdotes.
I’m still scratching my head on how this book got so many 5-star reviews.
Marketing, marketing, marketing?
Here’s the 2nd sentence in the book. It’s clunky, confusing, and in need of a good copyeditor:
“After a piece of writing has been, likely through numerous drafts, developed and revised by the writer and by the person I tend to call the ‘editor’ editor and deemed essentially finished and complete, my job is to lay my hands on that piece of writing and make it . . . better.”
And the next non-one-word “sentence.” (It’s a fragment):
“Not to rewrite it, not to bully and flatten it into some notion of Correct Prose, whatever that might be, but to burnish and polish it and make it the best possible version of itself that it can be—to make it read even more like itself than it did when I got to work on it.”
Burnish MEANS polish (and any copyeditor worth her salt would have cut one). Unfortunately, it appears the author is incapable of doing either to his own prose. This “sentence” would be much stronger with half the words:
“My job is not to rewrite the book but to trim and polish the prose until it glistens.”
The first page of the book is unreadable. I stopped there.
Your mileage may vary.
~D. L. Orton, author of the best-selling Between Two Evils series. Get the 1st book in the series, Crossing In Time: An Edgy Love Story (Between Two Evils Book 1), for free right now!