By Bill Bryson

One of many English language’s so much expert and liked writers publications us all towards special, mistake-free usage.

As ordinary invoice Bryson says it top: “English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, filled with quirks and irregularities that regularly appear willfully at odds with good judgment and customary feel. it is a language the place ‘cleave’ can suggest to chop in part or to carry halves jointly; the place the straightforward note ‘set’ has 126 assorted meanings as a verb, fifty eight as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; the place if you happen to can run quick you're relocating rapidly, but when you're caught speedy you're not relocating in any respect; [and] the place ‘colonel,’ ‘freight,’ ‘once,’ and ‘ache’ are strikingly at odds with their spellings.” As a replica editor for the London Times within the early Nineteen Eighties, invoice Bryson felt keenly the shortcoming of an easy-to-consult, authoritative consultant to fending off the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly recommended to a writer that he may still write one. unusually, the proposition was once accredited, and for “a amount of money rigorously gauged to not reason embarrassment or emotions of overworth,” he proceeded to put in writing that book–his first, inaugurating his stellar career.

Now, a decade and a part later, revised, up to date, and punctiliously (but no longer overly) Americanized, it has turn into Bryson’s Dictionary of complex Words, greater than ever a necessary advisor to the splendidly disordered factor that's the English language. With a few a thousand entries, from “a, an” to “zoom,” that function real-world examples of questionable utilization from a global array of guides, and with a precious thesaurus and consultant to pronunciation, this particular, prescriptive, and–because it really is written via invoice Bryson–often witty publication belongs at the table of each one that cares adequate in regards to the language to not maul or misuse or distort it.

From the Hardcover edition.