I am looking for a grammar book or style book that might be considered by American-English writers to be “the authority” on such matters. I am actually looking for a particular book. I just can’t remeber the name or any clues other than the following:
some years ago, in Word Court in the Atlantic Monthly, a writer asked for an opinion regarding a dipsute between (the book I’m looking for) and her English professor. The Word Court (Barbara something or other - I think) complimented the writer on consulting (the book I’m looking for).
I’ve had great luck here before with impossibly vague requests. Let’s see what you’ve got.
No, Truss is not only wrong about half the things she says (I found a mistake in the very first entry I opened the book to), there’s no way to use the book as a reference, since there’s no index. She’s just whining that no one follows the rules that she wrongly learned as a kid (and she often breaks the rules she’s fulminating against).
Strunk and White is good, but not as a style book.
I’d recommend:
Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Transitive Vampire (grammar) and The Well-Tempered Sentence (punctuation). Solid grounding in the rules and fun to read.
The previously mentioned Chicago Manual of Style for fomatting.
The GPO Style Manual (Available free online), especially for their listing of what words should be hyphenated (e.g., score board or scoreboard).
The AP Style Manual. Newspaper style, but good information.
There is no such thing as “the” style guide. There are a number of style guides, each with a specialized audience in mind.
The Chicago Manual of Style is one. Newspapers often use the New York Times or the AP style guides. Academia depends on the MLA style guide. There is a style guide for lawyers, whose name I can’t remember. The sciences use the APA style guide. *The New Yorker *magazine has its own very idiosyncratic style guide. There must be bunches of others that I’m not familiar with.
Nobody (well, nobody with any sense) considers any one of these to be “the authority” or better than any other. You use what you are told to use by whatever editor or authority figure is in control. If you switch fields you switch style guides too.
However, I think the best possible grammar advice is forums like this. It’s good to see many different ideas about grammar, and the more teachers, linguists and grammarians you can find in one place, the better. Another good forum for grammar advice is Dave’s ESL Cafe, but it’s not as active as here.
In matters of grammar, I prefer Harbrace College Handbook. Just get the most recent edition and you should be on solid ground. I have the Fourth Edition from college days and the Eleventh Edition that I picked up for a quarter at a garage sale.
The book is called Garner’s Modern American Usage.
It is regarded by some as the best of the prescriptivist style guides. I find it somewhat uneven myself. Its mini-essays are absolutely superb, by themselves worth the price of the book. Its individual word entries are often not that good. Garner has some fundamental misunderstandings about language–which is a distressingly common trait in would-be language mavens–and he sometimes ignores his own stated principles. Still, it’s a pretty good book, all in all.
By the way, since we’re speaking about Geoff Pullum of Language Log, the Chicago Manual of Style, and the shortcomings of Bryan Garner with respect to English grammar, then I would be remiss to not cite this Language Log post in which Pullum explains how Garner’s contribution besmirches the otherwise distinguished Chicago book.
Even better is this follow up post. My own editing process, when I’m trying to avoid stepping over the line, can mirror Pullum’s example quite strongly.
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to recommend these books (even a year of introductory linguistics classes has already taught me all about the many ways they are not only prescriptivists but prescriptivists who just make stuff up), I just thought they might have been the book disputed on the radio show. Guess they weren’t, though! :o
Grammar is to style as chemistry is to painting: Grammar is an observational science, dictated by what people actually do, whereas style is fashion and is ideally devoted to making people’s speech more euphonious and understandable.
Trying to lump grammar and style books into the same mass is only excusable given the horrendously poor state of linguistic education at the primary and secondary school levels in this country. The fact Strunk and White is still countenanced is further evidence for my point.
RealityChuck: The only thing Strunk and White could possibly be is a style book. The fact it’s a horrible one does not make it a grammar book, or a cookbook, or a treatise on Diophantine equations.