Worth a Read Yes
Length 291
Quick Review The closest thing to porn I’ve ever read for a word-nerd.
I love everything about language. How it functions. How it changes. How it’s used. How it can be manipulated. I think it’s fascinating on every level. Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer is my version of porn. It’s an amazing book for language lovers, seasoned writers, author hopefuls, and everyone in between. We’re all writers; we do it every day in emails, text messages, proposals, and more.
Dreyer’s English is my favorite style guide I’ve encountered. It’s not as thick, all-encompassing, or menacing as the MLA, AP, or any other style guide because it’s for writers who want to write. Dreyer writes with a sense of humor. He simultaneously says his way is the best and also allows for every other writer/copyeditor/reader/editor/person to have their own preferences — outside of the Oxford comma — because, if we’re being honest, writing and language are an art and inherently subjective. Do not glaze over the footnotes; they are amazing, full of wit, side remarks, random tidbits, and even mentions notes his copyeditor jotted to him. Gold. Amazing quotes and excerpts from books and media of all genres and eras are used as good and bad examples throughout. Unsurprisingly, Dreyer’s vast vocabulary makes the book even more entertaining to read. It’s unusual I come across a word I don’t know, but I came across a handful I had to look up.
One of the first sections of the book speaks to breaking rules because that is exactly what artists do, and great writers are artists, “…Great Nonrules of the English Language. You’ve encountered all of these; likely you were taught them in school. I’d like you to free yourself of them.”. Dreyer wants writers to know the rules and break them. He also wants writers to know the stupid rules, which should have never been rules to begin with because there are a great many of those. I was lucky to have brilliant professors who told me a lot of the rules were archaic and stupid, and many of the other rules are breakable. The few things they didn’t teach me, I learned through trial and error as a writer typing, reading, editing, deleting, and retyping my work. One of the best pieces of advice I learned, Dreyer pointed out more than once, “One of the best ways to determine whether your prose is well-constructed is to read it aloud.” Learning is done through visuals, and Dreyer’s English is littered with bad versions and good versions of sentences. My particular favorite is the correction from: “A mother’s responsibilities are to cook, clean, and the raising of the children” to the much better grammatically and societally: “A father’s responsibilities are to cook, to clean, and to raise the children.” Another fun example mentions my home-state’s capital, “I think of the Internet as a real place, as real as or realer than Des Moines.” It may not be a totally fabulous nod in Iowa’s direction, but it is a nod.
There’s one thing I always look for in grammar guides: The writer’s opinion on the series comma, or Oxford comma. I’m a groupie of the comma, and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. Luckily, Dreyer is not an idiot and had my vote of confidence when he said, “I don’t want to belabor the point; neither am I willing to negotiate it. Only godless savages eschew the series comma.” Not only does he advocate for the appropriate way to write a series, his advice is spot on, in my humble opinion. I have told every. single. writer. I have ever worked with the same. exact. advice. found in Chapter 1 — and to delete “that” from 98% of their writing. The only thing I disagree with Dreyer on is using an apostrophe s to show possession after words ending in s. (I argue “Jesus’ fish” not “Jesus’s fish” looks better, Mr. Dreyer.)
Language and grammar are political. I took an entire college class on the subject. Dreyer does not come out and say so in Dreyer’s English, but through his footnotes, writing, side comments, and examples, it is clear grammar and language are political.
By the way… GET RID OF THE DOUBLE SPACE AFTER THE PERIOD. It’s been out for a very long time, but some people still do it. It drives me crazy. Benjamin Dreyer is copy chief of Random House. He is literally in charge of grammar at the publishing house. If you don’t want to listen to little old me, listen to him. Also use the Oxford comma. Benjamin Dreyer, the big boss, says so.
I loved reading Dreyer’s English. It’s my kind of porn, or as other people would call it, an accessible and entertaining guide to using the English language. Benjamin Dreyer is funny and smart, while also being relatable. He doesn’t mind letting his inner nerd shine through, which makes him even more relatable to me because I also do this: “Sometimes I’ll read old books as much for the pleasure of their old-fashioned stylistic oddities as for their actual content. We all have our own fun.”
Memorable Quotes
“Copyediting is a knack. It requires a good ear for how language sounds and a good eye for how it manifests itself on the page; it demands an ability to listen to what writers are attempting to do and, hopefully and helpfully, the means to augment it.”
“As much as I like a good rule, I’m an enthusiastic subscriber to the notion of “rules are meant to be broken” — once you’ve learned them, I hasten to add.”
bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna
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Title: Dreyer’s English; An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
Author: Benjamin Dreyer
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780812995701
