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Title: Modern American Usage by Jacques Barzun, Wilson Follett ISBN: 0-8090-6950-4 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: October, 1979 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A handy guide with helpful advice for the general writer
Comment: This is a very handy book. Some will have different views of the guidance this book provides, but for the general writer this book can be very helpful. There is an essay in the back: "On Usage, Pedantry, Grammar, and the Orderly Mind". The more you agree with this essay the more you will like this book. And the more you find yourself disagreeing with the essay you will find yourself disliking this book.
It is organized in a way that looks like a dictionary, but you may or may not be using the same word or phrase as the book to find a specific topic. So, there is an Inventory of Main Entries in the front of the book you can quickly scan to find what you are looking for and then turn to that term in the main part of the book.
There is a lot of personal preference in deciding whether you like Fowler or Follett and which edition of either of them you choose. But I think any of them is better than struggling on your own. Even if you disagree with the book's recommendations you will have made a more informed choice. You will find your writing more confident and more clear. Isn't that enough?
Rating: 5
Summary: For conservative writers
Comment: First I must disagree with the reviewer who calls a noun followed by an apostrophe and an "s" a possessive noun. There is room for legitimate argument here, and I prefer to call such a word a possessive adjective. To me it is far more adjective than noun and so the noun part of it can't be an antecedent for a later pronoun. Therefore, I agree with what the reviser of Follett's book says rather than with what he does. Another man, who was once an English professor at Ohio State (Corbett, I think), and for all I know may be there still, also frowns heavily on the use of a possessive noun or possessive adjective as an antecedent. One must simply find a way to reconstruct passages that tempt one to break this commandment.
I once read Follett's book from cover to cover. The man (not he) was an elegant writer. Nowadays I dip into it to refresh my memory and to find passages to use as arguments in pointing out the writing faults of others.
Description is a fine thing, but I'm a member of the prescriptive school and so am perfectly happy with Follett's edicts. When several people are working together to produce a single book or series of books, they must all be following the same path.
My only objection to Follett's book is the lack of an index. His section titles are not always straightforward or descriptive, so some things are hard to find.
Rating: 1
Summary: Here's All You Need to Know
Comment: Wensberg's revision of Follett's Modern English Usage is one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" usage books. Careful readers of this book will have no trouble finding examples of Wensberg violating his own proscriptions. One example should be enough for this forum. On page 29 Wensberg writes "Perhaps the possessive noun is the part of speech most often mistaken for an antecedent. 'On the Vice President's arrival at Kennedy Airport, he explained to reporters that...' The pronoun 'he' could represent 'the Vice President' (no 's), because both are in the nominative case. But the possessive 'Vice President's' is no 'he;' it serves as an adjective." Yet in his introduction on page viii he writes "I have gained both space and speed by trimming prolixities from Follett's prose and by making some explanations a bit simpler than he left them." So much for a possessive noun not being an antecedent to a pronoun.
The idea that a noun is the genitive case is an improper antecedent to a pronoun is erroneous. A noun in the genitive case is noun, not an adjective. In fact for as long as there has been an English language the case of antecedent noun has been irrelevent to a pronoun.
And that's all you need to know.
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Title: The Careful Writer by Theodore M. Bernstein ISBN: 0684826321 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics Series) by Henry Fowler, Simon Winchester ISBN: 0198605064 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Garner's Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner ISBN: 0195161912 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition by University of Chicago Press Staff ISBN: 0226104036 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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Title: On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary : The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William K. Zinsser ISBN: 0060006641 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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