The most fun to be had while grappling with grammar.
I’ve been immersed in grammar, punctuation and writing skills for the last year, as I train for my role as an editor. So, I’ve read a lot of books on these subjects. Most of them take themselves very seriously, and even though I’m intrigued, some of these books are hard work.
Not this one.
Graceful experience
Dreyer’s English is the work of Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief at Random House. His vast experience shows. He is confident, self-deprecating and funny. He’s managed to hit a perfect tone for the book – I am left in awe of his wisdom while being only slightly intimidated by him. Even though he could take this paragraph, edit it to within an inch of its life, and make it 100 times better.
Anyone’s writing will be immediately improved by reading and applying the first paragraph of the book:
‘Here’s your first challenge:
Go a week without writing
very
rather
really
quite
in fact’
Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English
I’ll bet we’re all sagely nodding in agreement while feeling slightly embarrassed because we’re guilty of at least one of these common sins. (I’m really quite guilty of scattering ‘verys’ about.)
What a brilliant start.
The meat of the book
The introduction sets out the intention of the book; to share Dreyer’s extensive experience so that we can all write better. It does this from several angles.
The first, succinct, section covers what NOT to write; the empty words that an experienced editor will swoop upon and eradicate with the bloody slash of a red pen (or a good thump on the delete key). I’ve quoted the first few above. Dreyer is right about the others too.
Then he starts tackling the rules of writing. This isn’t a stuffy, boring prescription of how to do things, but an entertaining gallop through rules that are more flexible than you thought, the perils of punctuation, numbers, what to do about foreign words, grammar rules and how fiction can run rings around many of these assumptions.
The second half of the book deals with more fiddly details; words that often get spelled incorrectly, words that get confused, and word choices and uses that just rub people up the wrong way.
All of this is delivered with a wry humour and authority that had me nodding along. I’ve seen most of this advice in other books on writing well, but I don’t think any of them managed to get so much of it stuck in my brain so well. It is a book to use as a reference, but also to be pulled off the shelf and perused for entertainment. It is genuinely a good read.
Conclusion
Dreyer reminds us that this is a book of his views since so many of these ‘rules’ are matters of opinion. But his experience and the deftness of his approach make his opinions authoritative, and he manages to do this without being condescending. The book is charming and amusing. Highly recommended.
Note: I’m in the UK, so I read the slightly longer version ‘translated’ for the British market. This means I was treated to a little more material contemplating how weird we all are to insist on keeping all those letter u’s all over the place and for believing that a vest can be made of string.
Σχόλια