technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer
a fun and entertaining and not terribly disagreeable sequence of opinions
4 stars
I just reread this book, which is in the tradition of easily readable and digestible style guides (not, for example, The Chicago Manual of Style that sits on my shelf waiting to referenced while I instead do web searches and fend off dubious AI results). It's similar in form and length to the venerable Strunk and White but more entertaining, especially the jabs at Trump (during his first term), which I had forgotten but now are especially appreciated during the sequel. As for the style stuff, I find it mostly agreeable (he admits a lot comes down to personal preference and often bows to modern convention), a bit nit-picky here and there, a bit baffling here and there (he says he had to deal with default-white characters in novels early in his career, but I haven't noticed that's changed), and plenty of interesting etymology and cultural trivia. It's much more …
I just reread this book, which is in the tradition of easily readable and digestible style guides (not, for example, The Chicago Manual of Style that sits on my shelf waiting to referenced while I instead do web searches and fend off dubious AI results). It's similar in form and length to the venerable Strunk and White but more entertaining, especially the jabs at Trump (during his first term), which I had forgotten but now are especially appreciated during the sequel. As for the style stuff, I find it mostly agreeable (he admits a lot comes down to personal preference and often bows to modern convention), a bit nit-picky here and there, a bit baffling here and there (he says he had to deal with default-white characters in novels early in his career, but I haven't noticed that's changed), and plenty of interesting etymology and cultural trivia. It's much more educational and entertaining than my interactions with actual (and self-designated) editors, but a large part of that problem is they don't cite style guides a la Grammar Girl (one editor a technical publishing house said the change he was pushing was an industry standard but he didn't have time provide a reference, I guess they just write them and don't cite them). In any case, one reason to read style guides is so you can avoid those issues when you publish your Great American Novel, so, especially if you're anticipate submitting to Random House, give this one a read, and hopefully you will stop using literally to mean not literally.