You know somewhere that I can go to find out useful things like how to use hyphens, em- and en-dashes. Where I can figure out the difference between i.e. and e.g. and q.v. Someplace that I can turn to to tell people that it’s not necessary for humans to put an “'s” after words that already end in “s.”
Apparently the 15th Chicago Manual of Style sucks ass. Something for general usage, Fowler’s perhaps? Oxford’s American?
Thanks for the input.
I love, love, love The Little, Brown Handbook. Published by . . . Little, Brown. I have the Fifth Edition. Not sure what they are up to at this point.
I really love it. I even just read it for fun. It’s that good! (Grammar-types will understand.) 
One of the best general grammar guides are Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s, The Transitive Vampire and The Well-Tempered Sentence. Good guides and fun to read.
There’s also the classic The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
Try Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Witty, funny and useful, but I forget who it’s by.
I’m not familiar with the Little, Brown book but the others mentioned are great. Though Eats, shoots and leaves is more of an entertaining punctuation manifesto than a real manual. (Go play the punctuation game at the website!)
Fowler’s is the king of usage. It’s large and comprehensive. All your questions that cannot be answered elsewhere will be answered in there. Also, there is a biography of Fowler out, and it’s a good read.
Eats, Shoots And Leaves was written by Lynne Truss. It has become a huge publishing phenomenon, and so I dare say a few people will recommend it. However, it isn’t really a good choice (IMHO) if you actually want to learn about grammar as you say you do (and to be fair, it isn’t really written as a tutorial, although you can learn things from it).
Fowler remains the best reference book, but modern readers may have a problem with its style (even the modern editions). However, a reference book isn’t intended to teach.
As someone who earned a living as a tech writer for many years, I offer two crumbs of advice. (1) avoid any ‘popular’ book aimed at adults, and instead buy whatever text book is currently being used in schools to teach the rudiments of grammar and do the exercises. (2) Keep it simple. You can write perfectly well using very little by way of punctuation marks and complex syntax.
I have never heard of this, but I desperately hope the handbook is, in fact, both little and brown. If they have any sense of decorum at all, it ought to be.
Fowlers, the classic; Strunk & White, the other classic; me, I like the no-longer-popular Random House Style Book, ed. Crews. I enjoy reading this sort of thing; I’m really weird. But the best way to absorb the material is to skip the manuals, and just read everything else. Read the New York Times every day, for example, and eventually you’ll pick up their writing style by osmosis. Worse things could happen to you.
I’ve gotten good mileage out of The St. Martin’s Handbook, although it tends to focus on mechanics rather than style. For style, I like The Complete Plain Words by Gower. I use it as an antidote for my tendency toward volubility, which always detracts from a technical report.
I’m a big fan of Strunk & White. Bonus - it’s small enough that you can stick it in your pocket and carry it with you everywhere.
“Woe is I”, by Patricia T. O’Connor is fun and helpful.
That was fun! I got 92%. The problem with the game, and the book, and indeed most grammar books, is that there are no definitive rules about a lot of the language. Many things do come down to personal preference, style and regional variations in the language. So when they start to get insistent on points you disagree with you can feel quite annoyed with them. And it would be a dull world if everyone wrote in exactly the same manner.
Which explains why I only scored 92% 
Nevertheless, Eats… is an interesting read.
Firstly, i don’t think the Chicago Manual of Style sucks ass at all, and it’s especially good for teaching you about punctuation usage, such as when to use an em-dash rather than an en-dash or a hyphen.
As far as grammar and usage go, i agree with many of the suggestions here. I really love Gower’s Complete Plain Words.
For English usage, i have Fowlers Modern English Usage, Third Edition, edited by R.W. Burchfield. When i lived in Australia, this was my main source of information, because Australian usage tends to follow English usage very closely, at least in formal writing.
On the American side, i can’t believe we’ve got this far into the thread without someone mentioning A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by Bryan Garner. This is a fabulous source, and is a model of judicious advice, shunning both excessive descriptivism and prescriptivism.
I was specifically referring to the 15th ed., which, as I understand, is illegible. Would going for a used copy of the 14th be more to my benefit.
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Man, I can’t believe how poorly I did on that freakin’ ESL test. Ugh.
Yep. Even an earlier one would probably be fine. We have the 13th in this household.
This isn’t really purely on grammar and usage, but it’s such a great book I have to mention it.
Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing, by John Trimble.
It’s the most helpful book I owned during college. He doesn’t really go into fine details about many things, but the book can help writers rearrange their thinking.