Looking to crack open a good grammar book? Then I am happy to recommend Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, which warmed the cockles of this grammar geek’s heart. My husband was a little concerned (read: irritated) that I laughed aloud, with a literal LOL, in so many places, but indeed, I did—and over a grammar book.

I’m sure it helps that I commit some editing myself on occasion, but even if I did not, I would have great admiration for the role of those like Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House. I say he's doing the Lord's work by making the world a better, more readable place. I happen to like and even enjoy grammar rules, but I don’t believe fussy editor types are the only ones who will enjoy this book. Not by a long shot. Do you know the word “faffing,” for instance? I didn't, but his use of “faffing about” made me look it up, and now I’m a fan.

Dreyer shares my fondness for the serial comma, and he states his case rather simply: “Only godless savages eschew the series comma.” (He says “series,” I say “serial.” To-may-to, to-mah-to.)

His writing is irreverent and occasionally self-deprecating, and how lovely it was to read that even a man in his position doesn’t quite know what all these blessed grammar things are called. “Even now,” he writes, “I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what a nominative absolute is, I think that the word ‘genitive’ sounds vaguely smutty, and I certainly don’t know, or care to know, how to diagram a sentence. I hope I’m not shocking you.”

And if I’m ever asked to play grammar-themed trivia one day—and my goodness, I hope I am—I will know that  the capital “G” in LaGuardia is a “medial capital.”

Many of the rules (and a few preferences) he discusses are simply things I’ve already learned and internalized from The Chicago Manual of Style, but Dreyer sure makes them fun to read and consider. I simply can't think of a writer or editor who wouldn’t benefit from reading this charming and helpful book.

Hail to all English nerds of the world. Join together and read our newest tome into the world of grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation.

For some reason I love to read English rules and Dreyer has composed a book fulll of wit and humor to explain something normally dull and dreary. . This book should be in every writer’s library and in every student’s bag. I cannot imagine the amount of time and work that went into compiling this book. It is excellently written (please don’t ding me Mr. Dryer). I highly recommend.

DREYER'S ENGLISH by Benjamin Dreyer is aptly subtitled "An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style from the Copy Chief of Random House." However, that fails to truly convey the conversational tone which Dreyer adopts as he muses about his long experience and offers numerous suggestions. One is the challenge to go a week without writing these 12 words or phrases: very, rather, really, quite, in fact, just, so, pretty, of course, surely, that said, and actually. In fact, (oops!), Dreyer notes: "feel free to go the rest of your life without another 'actually'."

Some of his best advice? "One of the best ways to determine if your prose is well-constructed is to read it aloud." I wish our students would listen! They will find much to inform and improve their writing in chapters titled "60 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation" or "A Little Grammar is a Dangerous Thing" or "The Trimmables" on editing superfluous phrases. Publishers Weekly gave DREYER'S ENGLISH a starred review and Booklist described it as a "remarkably fun book about a dastardly dry subject..." Enjoy!

This isn’t a Be All End All guide to anything. Dipping its toe into grammar, punctuation, spelling, and tips on how not to trip up on similars, it’s more a quick and dirty “here are ways to write a better” book. Oh yeah, and it’s fun too.

I freely admit that who/whom still trips me up. I despise the recent abundance of artisanal. Gift as a verb and invite as a noun make me ill. I’ve always liked hopefully and am thrilled I can keep using it. Hopefully that won’t bring out a mob of angry villagers with pitchforks and torches.

The advice to seek help from big, fat style-books is wise because the, as you say, Department of There’s an Exception to Everything is always open for business. I love the English language but it’s a wild, feral beast at times, ready to bit the hand that writes it and draw a gallon or so of blood. And note (I love starting sentences with “and” or “but”), I’ve made it through the review without using any of the dreaded Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers. Go me. B+

Title: Dreyer’s English
Author: Benjamin Dreyer, Random House Copy Chief
Genre: Reference, Writing, Style Manual
Publication Date: 1/29/2019
Formats: Print, eBook, and Audiobook Summary: This is an entertaining guide to writing better. Dreyer has found a way to make reading about grammar and style interesting. Rather than just state the rules or standards, Dreyer explains why the goal is clear writing and how following (or ignoring) a rule can get you to that goal.

Key Takeaways:

It’s worthwhile to get the printed book and the audiobook. The print version is a wonderful style manual while the audiobook is far more entertaining.

Style manuals are usually as dry as they are boring. “Dreyer’s English” is a welcome exception to that rule.

“Dreyer’s English” is a perfect graduation gift. I also think that it should be required reading at all law schools, but I might be biased.

Dreyer supports the series/serial/Oxford comma but isn’t Team Two-Spaces After a Period. Which will make for some pretty interesting Twitter battles among writing enthusiasts.

Review Material Sources: Advance Review Copies provided by NetGalley and Libro.fm

Never thought you were the type to stay up late reading a grammar and style guide, dissolving in laughter every few pages? I thought I wasn't either. Allow this book to prove you wrong.

Random House's chief copy editor Benjamin Dreyer is a master in his field, and in his first book he's sharing trade secrets - hard-learned and sometimes harder-defended - from his career in copy. These are "the issues I most often run across while copyediting and how I attempt to address them.. topics where I thought I truly had something to add to the conversation, and... curiosities and arcana that interested or simply amused me."

Dreyer copyedits a lot of fiction and draws from this work with writing and style tips that apply to any kind of writing, even as banal as emails. His experience is monumental, and although I wouldn't classify this as memoir in any strict sense, it incorporates autobiographical storytelling elements as he relates memorable moments on the job. I loved his description of early work involving scrutinizing draft copies for differences, maybe because it reminds me of some of my own more dreadful job tasks:

It's like endlessly working on one of those spot-the-difference picture puzzles in an especially satanic issue of Highlights for Children.

The book is structured by themes he's going to school us on, including "Peeves and Crotchets," those maddening points that arise too often in writers' work, sometimes incorrect but sometimes not - just unappealing when there are better options. One burr in his saddle here is sure to be familiar to anyone who regularly works with corporate copy: "The use of 'onboard' as a verb in place of 'familiarize' or 'integrate' is grotesque. It's bad enough when it's applied to policies; applied to new employees in place of the perfectly lovely word 'orient,' it's worse. And it feels like a terribly short walk from onboarding a new employee to waterboarding one."

I mention this one because even if you're not writing or editing professionally, there are bound to be stylistic points that have a lot of value. There wasn't a massive amount that was new here, BUT! I'm actually a copy editor myself. Yes, I know you would never know it from my error and typo-filled reviews, and I should physician-heal-thyself but that's how it goes. I can only fix someone else's work. My copyediting arena is far less interesting than Dreyer's (he writes about copyediting a newly released volume of Shirley Jackson's), but still, many of the stickiest points I'd already learned from or researched for my own work and suspect others may have as well.

All to say, if you've had to do the same for school or work, you might not be bowled over in surprise by what you learn, but I guarantee something will be enlightening. I learned the most about style, which is of course incredibly valuable. He made me realize that I've got to stop overusing "really". Ditto "very" and "pretty". "Actually" needs banished completely, and so does "just" unless it's truly contributing something. I have a ways to go.

He also may surprise you in terms of words you're using incorrectly in "The Confusables," where he clarifies spellings and meanings responsible for inordinate amounts of confusion and chaos. Some surprised me, others I've spent countless time correcting myself. Some of these battles will be fought more successfully than others.

Like this one: "Only godless savages eschew the series comma,"adding, sensibly, "No sentence has ever been harmed by a series comma, and many a sentence has been improved by one."Try convincing the British of that, please. Speaking of UK vs. US English, he addresses lots of rules, oddities, and amusing differences between the two styles, giving some helpful guidelines for framing UK-style quotations, which I've also been doing partially incorrectly. Oops! Wish he'd written this sooner.

Perhaps my favorite confusable addressed is a simple but menacing one: it's/its.

"It's" is "it is," as in "It's a lovely day today."
"Its" is the possessive of "it," as in "It rubs the lotion on its skin."

Could I love him more?

Shall I give one embarrassing example of a word I've been using incorrectly? It started off well enough:

Gory crimes are grisly.
Tough meat is gristly.
Some bears are grizzly.

I'm with him and confident so far. Then:

"Grizzled" refers to hair streaked with gray - and, by extension, it makes a decent synonym for "old." It does not mean, as many people seem to think it does, either unkempt or rugged.

I... did not know that. I'm glad he specified "many" people seem to be incorrect here, but it was still a reminder that I need to consult the dictionary more often, especially before I go slashing up other people's usage. Vocabulary nuances are seemingly small points but they impact heavily. My opinion went downhill on a podcast I mentioned after the host used words incorrectly and I found myself getting increasingly annoyed. How can you trust a storyteller when they can't get the language of it right?

The highlight of this book is Dreyer's wondrous sense of humor. Take his caution against [sic], which he warns not to use as a "snide bludgeon to suggest that something you're quoting is quite dopey...It's the prose equivalent of an I'M WITH STUPID T-shirt and just about as charming."

Through footnotes to his rules and the examples themselves, he tells positively delightful anecdotes of bad writing he's encountered and how he's learned to make it better. Hilarity often ensues. But it's also an effective learning technique - I'm not soon to forget rules taught so memorably, even grammar-related ones, which I've always struggled to keep handily in mind and more often than not find myself researching when I need them.

Which is also fine, he assures. He stresses this was not meant to be a definitive grammar or style guide because such a thing doesn't exist, nor should it. Language is an evolving animal and we change it with the stylistic choices we collectively make. I appreciated this attitude so much - I've always preferred a more flexible, adaptable usage and been driven crazy by those who follow rules militarily (some of which aren't even real or right!)

In the chapter, "A Little Grammar is a Dangerous Thing," he reveals his secret: He hates grammar.

I hope I'm not shocking you. But at a certain point I figured that if I was going to be fixing grammar for a living, I might do well to learn a little something about it, and that's precisely what I did: I learned a little something about it. As little as I needed to.

I can't express how happy (and not alone) that made me feel.

In "The Trimmables," he addresses ways to eliminate repetition as well as some annoying inaccuracies, one of which I ought to make a pinned post on this site: "Lately one encounters people referring to any full-length book, even a work of nonfiction, as a novel. That has to stop." YES. I would like to establish a task force of we two plus Adam Hochschild to end this. "Novel" is not a catch-all synonym when you don't want to say "book" again! Lots of Goodreads reviewers do this and it makes me cringe. Even "nonfiction novel" is dicey and highly specific territory, and better avoided unless you're talking about Truman Capote.

In his call-outs on redundancies in this chapter, he did break my heart a little as I'll never be able to delight over Unsolved Mysteries in the same way: "Once it's solved, it's not a mystery anymore, is it" At some point in reading you'll have to come to terms with something like this.

Even if you don't think you need it, you do. I've never read a more amusing book about language and usage, it's appealing far beyond the world of pedantic grammar nerds. Total delight.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I did not expect to love a book about writing as much as I did with Dreyer's English. Dreyer approaches writing with a copywriter's eye, which is perfect when you want your writing to feel like your most _you_ while also being technically correct. This debunks style/formatting myths and provides answers on hundreds of things that generally stop one's writing up, all while remaining witty and highly readable throughout.

A delightfully written & very helpful book from a long-time copyeditor at Random House. It's full of great advice that will help any writer improve.

I've been an avid reader all of my life. This has caused me to have a deep interest in the English language. I use to write journalism and magazine articles and now I'm a project manager for a software company. One thing I've found universal in all of these settings is I'm a stickler for proper writing style. I've read many style guides before, but DREYER'S ENGLISH by Benjamin Dreyer is one of the most readable and insightful style books I've read. It's a more modern take on grammar. Like most things, the English language is constantly evolving, naturally, the appropriate use of it changes too. It's important to stay current and not write with the style you learned in high school or college. Another thing I appreciated about this book was that Benjamin encourages you to be subjective. Maybe his recommendation isn't for you, but you'll have the full reasoning of his logic. I found myself nodding exaggeratively and applauding throughout reading this book for the simple fact that I whole-heartedly agreed with what he had to say. If you want to learn more about the proper ways of written communication, please pick up this book.

Benjamin Dreyer's job at Random House is simple. In his own words, "My job is to lay my hands on that piece of writing and make it... better. Cleaner. Clearer. More efficient... [to] 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." In Dreyer's English, Mr. Dreyer puts it all out there. The book is filled with tips such as going a month without using the words: very, rather, really, quite, in fact, just, so, pretty, of course, surely, that said, and actually. He also discusses how one may end a sentence with a preposition, but it "isn't always such a hot idea, mostly because a sentence should, when it can, aim for a powerful finale and not simply dribble off like an old man's unhappy micturition." And that is what I was unprepared for, the humor.

"Only godless savages eschew the series comma."

The book is more entertaining than the latest comedy! There are so many blunt remarks about proper apostrophe use, colons, and semicolons- not to mention numerous political references.  I could elaborate with countless quotes, but then I'd spoil all the fun. You never thought a grammar book would be fun, did you. But, you don't have to take my word for it!

“Utterly delightful . . . will stand among the classics on how to use the English language properly.”—Elizabeth Strout

Funny, insightful and thoroughly entertaining guide to better writing

I loved this book. Author Benjamin Dreyer isn’t shy about giving his opinion and he does this in a most entertaining way. The book is made up of snippets so it’s easy to pick up and read for a few minutes. However putting the book down is significantly more difficult. I found myself saying that I would only read another couple of paragraphs and put the book down. Didn’t happen. Snippets turned into pages and pages into chapters. The book has about 219 footnotes; most were hilarious and rest merely funny. I strongly recommend this book.

This book serves as an excellent reference for writing and not just for social sciences and humanities audiences. Being a graduate student in STEM and therefore having to present my results in the form of written journal manuscripts, I'm always on the look out for such resources. I'd definitely recommend this to students!

What an unexpected gem! I read this book in an advance reading copy version I received through NetGalley (note, I didn’t call it an “advanced” reading copy), which often leads me to books that I likely would never be interested in reading. It is one of my favorite things about NetGalley, and with this book it really proved its worth.

A large part of my full-time job is producing proposal documents, which requires me to gather information, and then compile it into an appealing document that meets all of the requirements of the requesting agency, and provides a clear explanation about why my company is the best choice to provide the needed services. I work in the architecture/construction industry, and much of the source material that I use for the final proposal has been written by people with a pretty technical background and training.

Before reading this book, I would never have called myself a copy editor, but now I realize that I do a huge amount of copyediting with every document I prepare. As I began to read this book, I quickly realized that Dreyer was talking about exactly those struggles to clarify and perfect language and meaning that I work on daily. If I hadn’t been reading an ebook with a somewhat recalcitrant bookmarking feature, I would have filled the book with highlighting and Post-it notes throughout, marking pages where he specifically explains how to correctly construct a phrase that I had struggled with at some point within the last month.

But, although useful, this is not what makes this book a gem; instead, it is his sense of humor that I found so enjoyable. I laughed out loud more than once while reading this book, and that is a rarity for me. His notes are the carriers of much of the humor—although an odd comparison otherwise, this book reminded me of nothing more than a Terry Pratchett DiscWorld novel.

As soon as I finish this review, I am going to place a pre-order for this book; I can hardly wait to have a physical copy in hand to refer to on a regular basis. If my coworkers hear me snickering in my cubicle, then can be assured that I am simply hard at work.

I received an advance reading copy from Random House via NetGalley. Thanks.

I never knew how entertaining it could be to read a 400 page book about grammar and editing, but here we are. This book should be required reading in school. Any person who reads even a page of this book (which is not possible because you'll be hooked after a page, this man is a pro at his job after all) a step closer to becoming a better writer.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from the publisher.

If you've read my goodreads reviews for a while, you will have noticed that I'm brushing up on the basics in things that I do all the time-- art, music, writing. I recommend this to anyone who has been creating art for a long time. You'll be amazed at how many tips you've forgotten or never knew. This guide to English is full of reminders for the grammar nerd and useful information for everyone else.

Thanks to Random House and Goodreads for the ARC of this upcoming title. I loved it! Witty and useful (I almost said very witty, but I’m trying to cull my use of that overused word, as recommended by the author). I plan on buying a hard copy on publication and adding it to my reference library but it’s much more than a reference book. Recommended for anyone who cares about words.