Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style - Benjamin Dreyer

As copy chief of Random House, Benjamin Dreyer has pretty much seen it all – over and over again. A substantial portion of Dreyer’s new writing guide, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, even reads like a “Greatest Hits” list of the writing errors he has seen repeated most often during his two decades with the publisher. Anyone who writes, and with today’s technology all of us write all day long whether or not we realize it, will learn something from Dreyer’s English. That’s the good news; the bad news is that I can’t imagine a book more difficult to review than “An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.” If that chore doesn’t bring all your grammatical insecurities to the forefront, nothing will.

I knew I still had a lot to learn when the book’s first chapter, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose),” began with a challenge not to use for a week what turned out to be five of my favorite words: “very,” “rather,” “really,” “quite,” and “in fact.” And my apprehension only increased when Dreyer went on to add “just,” “pretty,” “surely,” “of course,” “so,” “that said,” and “actually” to the list. Dreyer is not saying never to use these words, only that they should be used sparingly if they are to have much of an impact on the reader.

Dreyer, though, is not as strict as this may make him sound because the second chapter of Dreyer’s English is an explanation of why we should ignore some of the written (and unwritten) writing rules we grew up with. (God bless him). Among other things, Dreyer gives us his blessing to:

·     Begin a sentence with “And” or “But,”

·     Split an Infinitive,

·     End a Sentence with a Preposition (see the first sentence of this paragraph),

·     Use Contractions in Formal Writing,

·     Actively Use the Passive Voice, and

·     Use Sentence Fragments (for effect).

Benjamin Dreyer

Dreyer’s English is broken into two distinct parts, “The Stuff in the Front” and “The Stuff at the Back,” with the second part being largely a series of lists (with explanations and tips) of things such as easily misspelled words, the author’s pet peeves, words easily confused by the writer (or spell check) with other words, notes on confusing proper names, and words that should never be used in connection with other words. Part One focuses as much on grammar as it does on style but proves to be as much fun to read as it is instructive because Dreyer so often uses his keen sense of humor to make his points. This section includes my favorite part of the book, a chapter entitled “67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation.” Somehow, the chapter managed to clarify some of my longtime uncertainties about punctuation at the same time it was making me feel that my grammar might not be as hopeless as I had feared. (So, of course, it is my favorite part of the book.)

Bottom Line: Dreyer’s English is an excellent style and grammar guide, and it is written in such humorous fashion that it is fun to read – what may be a first in the history of books on English grammar. My one quibble with the book, and it is a big one, is the author’s insistence on so often using President Trump in disparaging or negative terms to illustrate poor grammar or his simple dislike of the man and his policies. It was kind of funny the first two or three times, but the first third of Dreyer’s English is so heavily littered with the remarks and examples that they soon become little more than an irritating distraction. Why turn a book on grammar and style into a personal political statement? Thankfully, there are far fewer of these little throwaways in the final two-thirds of the book.