Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

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: €œEnglish 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 €œa 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 €œa, an€ to €œzoom,€ 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.