Should be on everyone's bookshelf - Rated 
Mr Bryson turns his experience as a sub-editor to the art of 'getting it right' in written English. Great for settling those arguments about correct usuage and for those niggly aspects of grammar you just can't quite remember from your schooldays.
An intelligent, engrossing read - Rated 
As I pored through this book (oh crikey, is that the right spelling of 'pored'?), one thing kept going through my mind: how on earth will I remember all these things?!
There's just so much in here; the English language is such a labyrinthine, potentially perplexing thing (oops, was that correct use of 'labyrinthine'?). You half want to say, oh the heck with it. As you read, you test yourself on what has gone before when a definition refers back to another. 'Just give me a second to remember...' you cry, and then curse yourself when you can't.
My second point is this: many of the meanings and usages of words continue to change and there's very little we can do about it. Bryson and others may like to insist that, eg media remains plural, but idiom forces it to bend another way. He occasionally admits that idiom is tough to battle against, but does so anyway. If he was around in 500 years (oo, do I need an apostrophe there?) time I suspect he will be disappointed with the change in meaning of many words. But why fight it? It's a losing battle in many cases.
In conclusion, this is an engrossing book for anyone who loves words, and comes highly recommended. BB's sardonic wit is kept in check but the book's content allows for much gentle humour.
A useful and entertaining book - could be a little more general though - Rated
Before finding fame as a travel writer with The Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson had been a sub-editor at the Times struggling with the nuances of the English language. What is the difference between flouting and flaunting; what exactly does it mean to imply and to infer; can one use the word either in reference to more than two alternatives? Unable to find a single, concise guide to which he could refer to for such `troublesome words', Bryson contacted Penguin and offered to write one himself.
Troublesome Words, the 2001 revised and updated edition of Bryson's original 1984 book (The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words), is an A - Z guide to words and phrases commonly misused in print. Drawing from more than 40 respected works on linguistics, Bryson provides advice and suggestions to everyday grammatical problems and helpfully illustrates them with real-life examples of misuse. He explains that culminate, for example, "does not signify any result or outcome, but rather one marking a high point" and cites an a news clipping from The Times which reads "The company's financial troubles culminated in the resignation of the chairman last June". The example highlights Bryson's lesson. A series of financial gains could culminate in the chairman receiving a bonus but financial troubles do not culminate in a resignation. Helpfully, he not only warns against words that are used incorrectly, but also those which are often used redundantly, such as basically; a word which in most contexts "is basically unnecessary, as here."
Unfortunately, the somewhat narrow breadth of the guide does betray its (and Bryson's) Fleet Street origins. Almost every example of misuse hails from newspaper pieces and, furthermore, usually from the business pages. So Bryson provides the correct spelling for the name of the household products company, Procter & Gamble but no guide to using, for example, the word breadth, as appears at the top of this paragraph (incorrectly as it happens, the phrase used should be "narrow scope"). As such, one can't help but feel the dictionary would be improved by a slight shift in emphasis toward the general writer.
These are minor gripes though, and Bryson is both a thoughtful and entertaining guide. Without bloating the book he peppers his definitions with etymology, anecdotes and, where appropriate, his trademark dry humour. He tells us, for example, that "the belief that 'and' should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that's all there is to it"; and that "barbecue is the only acceptable spelling in serious writing. Any journalist or other formal user of English who believes that the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment'. As such, Troublesome Words is one of those rare things: a reference work which can be dipped into time and again yet remains a pleasure when read cover-to-cover.
Better-than-average guide to pedantry. - Rated
I usually loathe this kind of book, because many of the rules they perpetuate turn out to be arbitrary inventions of previous writers (or 19th century scholars obsessed with using Latin grammar in English). This book is refreshing because Bryson evaluates the rules laid down by previous "authorities" against practical criteria: particularly, will following this rule improve clarity?
Not your usual Bryson book - Rated 
This is definitely a book to dip into at infrequent intervals rather than read from cover to cover. It is laid out like a dictionary which is perhaps what makes it rather "bitty". "Mother Tongue" is a much better read for those who want an insight into the English language.
|
