Product Description

With TROUBLESOME WORDS, journalist and bestselling travel-writer Bill Bryson gives us a clear, concise and entertaining guide to problems of English usage and spelling. Originally published as THE PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF TROUBLESOME WORDS, it has beenan indispensable companion to those who work with the written word for nearly twenty years. Now fully updated and revised, it is better than ever. So if you want to discover whether you should care about split infinitives, are cursed with an uncontrollable outbreak of commas or were wondering if that newsreader was right to say 'an historic day', this superb book is the place to find out.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3800 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
It is nearly 20 years since Bill Bryson first penned his deliciously witty paean to precision Troublesome Words. Now he has revised it and 60 per cent of the content is new so it's well worth another browse and a place on the desk corner of anyone who likes words and who wants to get things right.

Once a sub-editor at The Times, Bryson is irresistibly drawn to knowing that "to flaunt" means to display ostentatiously but "to flout" means to treat with contempt. Or that a straitjacket may be straight but its name means that its occupant is confined and restricted--in straitened circumstances, perhaps. And can you explain the difference between a Creole and a Pidgin or between egoism and egotism? If not consult Bryson. Then you'll be able to. There's no pedantry or pomposity in Bryson's writing. But he argues: "Just as we all agree that clarity is better served if 'cup' represents a drinking vessel and 'cap' something you put on your head, so too I think the world is a fractionally better place if we agree to preserve a distinction between 'its' and 'it's', between 'I lay down the law' and 'I lie down to sleep', between 'imply' and 'infer' and countless others."

Bryson modestly jokes that this alphabetically arranged book could be subtitled "Even More Things in English Usage That the Author Wasn't Entirely Clear about Until Quite Recently". If only most of us were sure about a fraction of the things Bryson clearly understands very well we might all be more effective writers and speakers. --Susan Elkin

Review
To have a book as definitive as this guide to the most commonly encountered problems of English spelling and usage is highly useful - and the fact that it's written by one of the most entertaining writers in the English language is a considerable bonus. Do you know the difference between blatant and flagrant or flount and flaunt? Do you wear an Arran sweater or an Aran sweater? Do you curl up with a whodunit or a whodunnit? Most of us are given pause by such nagging uncertainties, and while Bryson may not resolve every problem with finality (there are, after all, several options for commonly misused words), he provides us with as reliable a guide as we're likely to encounter. This book has been on many a reading table since its original publication in 1984, and really is indispensable for anyone whose business is the written word: journalists, writers, teachers, publishers. But for the ordinary reader, too, it's a diverting treasure trove of information, constantly challenging the things we think we know - but really don't. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, offering rulings that are both reliable and informed, while resolutely keeping pedantry at bay (this is the wisdom of having Bryson on board -- pomposity isn't going to get a look in with him around!). What Bryson brings to the book is humour - and we're never within a million miles of the kind of dry-as-dust tome that this could easily have been. For instance: 'Any journalist who believes that barbecue [may be] spelled bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment.' Who'd have thought that a book as utilitarian as this could be such a treat? (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Bill Bryson was born in 1951 in Iowa but lived in the UK for many years working as a sub-editor before becoming an international bestselling writer with books such as THE LOST CONTINENT and NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND. He now lives in New England withhis wife and four children.

Customer Reviews

Obsolete
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words may have been useful twenty-five years ago, when it was first published, but it has become redundant. Most entries clarify word spellings and meanings, which a normal dictionary does just as well (with the advantage that it lists all words, not an arbitrary selection). A Google or Yahoo search will instantly clarify the rest, such as corporate names. Grammatical or stylistic advice is rarely given, and adds little to Strunk & White's better-organised and clearer The Elements of Style. And because of the dictionary format, that advice is buried in distant entries and hard to find. Nor does Bryson's manual lend itself to reading `like a novel', even if he wrote it with his customary humour. This is most likely to sit on your shelf.

Masterful and masterly
Do you put 'spoonsful' or 'spoonfuls' of sugar into tea? Do you know the difference between defining and non-defining clauses and between 'androgynous' and 'androgenous'? Can you tell irony from sarcasm and a 'prophecy' from 'prophesy'? If all of this is second nature, you don't need this book. But you'd probably want to read it anyway.

The great triumph of Troublesome Words is that it's arranged like a dictionary but is interesting enough to read cover to cover as though it were a novel. It projects a sense of personality (Bryson's) and his values: companies' eccentric and convention-defying names - with backward facing letters, for example - should never be allowed to become 'a distraction in print'. It bears the hallmark of Bryson's distinctive style: conversational, witty and taut. All it lacks is a narrative.

Although essentially a work of reference, Brysonisms lighten the way. The entry for 'that' and 'which', for instance, advises brushing up on those clauses, defining and non- . 'Learning these distinctions is not, it must be said, anyone's idea of a good time, but it is one technical aspect of grammar that every professional user of English should understand because it is at the root of an assortment of grammatical errors.' And woe betide anyone who spells 'barbecue' with a 'q' and hyphens because they are clearly 'not ready for unsupervised employment'.

Other books of this type are more famous, authoritative and formidable - those by Fowler and Partridge in particular. But this is actually entertaining as well as instructive, and is also more up to date (and therefore more in touch with contemporary usage). It has my vote, anyway.

Trouble Averted
"The idea that you cannot use the word 'and' to begin a sentence is entirely without foundation. And that's all there is to it."

So begins one of the entries in this delightfully well-written aid. Unlike some books of this nature that can come across as preachy, pushy and arogant; Bryson's is none of these things. The main thrust of all his arguments is to seek out a common-sense answer to an all-too-common problem. In this venture, he succeeds greatly, delivering sound advice on when to use the right word at the right time.

There seems to have been a resurgence in interest for writing guides recently, but two things make this updated version stand out from a bloated market. Firstly, the fact that he uses actual examples, culled from journalisms' extenxive list of faux pas, to illustrate his points, and secondly, of course, his ever present humour and deft wit. The former makes this book one of the more helpful aids out there, the latter makes the experience intensely pleasurable.