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Common Errors in English Usage

10 best books like Common Errors in English Usage (Paul Brians): A Handbook to Literature, The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker, Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, The Elements of Grammar, 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses, The Grouchy Grammarian: A How-Not-To Guide to the 47 Most Common Mistakes in English Made by Journalists, Broadcasters, and Others Who Should Know Better, Flip Dictionary, 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why Itjust Might

A Handbook to Literature
AuthorWilliam Harmon
ISBN0130127310
It is a handy book that can be read for pleasure. However, the publisher really doesn't need to update it every 3 years to force poor students to buy the new editions. In this 10th edition the editor admitted there was little substantial he could add. In fact, he mentioned his children suggested three new...
The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate
AuthorEugene Ehrlich
ISBN0062701908
Between TV talk shows, radio call-in programs, email and the Internet, spontaneous-talk media has skyrocketed in the '90s. People are interacting more frequently and more fervently than ever before, turning the English language into an indecipherable mess. Now, this unique and concise compendium...
The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker
AuthorCharles Harrington Elster
The definitive pronouncement on more than 1,500 of our most commonly mispronounced words.

From the language maven Charles Harrington Elster comes an authoritative and unapologetically opinionated look at American speech. As Elster points out, there is no sewer in connoisseur, no dip...
Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell
AuthorVivian Cook
ISBN0743270991
"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word." -- Andrew Jackson
Weird or wierd? Necessary or neccessary? Recomend or recommend? English spelling is fiendish, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with it.

Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary is at once a celebration...
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
AuthorHenry Watson Fowler
ISBN0192813897
the first edition of this was published in 1926. written by a genius named Henry Fowler, it is a legendary masterpiece of wit, erudition, and inscrutable insight into how to write well. it has everything - commonly confused pairs, spellings, plurals, and ultranittygritty grammar (EIGHT PAGES on the...
The Elements of Grammar
AuthorMargaret Shertzer
ISBN0020154402
This is one of the better books on English grammar and is good to have around for continual reference. The spelling rules at the end of the book were excellent. It's hard to believe how people learn English. The terminology itself is daunting - predicate, nominative, voice, case, transitive, pluperfect,...
100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses
AuthorAmerican Heritage
ISBN0618493336
The 100 Words series continues to set the standard for measuring and improving vocabulary, with a new title focusing on words that are best known for getting people into linguistic trouble. 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses is the perfect book for anyone seeking clear and sensible guidance...
The Grouchy Grammarian: A How-Not-To Guide to the 47 Most Common Mistakes in English Made by Journalists, Broadcasters, and Others Who Should Know Better
AuthorThomas Parrish
ISBN0471223832
Do you commit apostrophe atrocities?

Are you tormented by the lie/lay conundrum?

Do you find yourself stuck between floaters and danglers?

Do your subjects and your verbs refuse to agree?

If so, you're not alone. Some of the most prominent professionals in TV broadcasting...
Flip Dictionary
AuthorBarbara Ann Kipfer
ISBN1582971404
You know what you want to say but can't think of the word. You can describe what you're thinking but you don't know the name for it. Flip Dictionary solves this common problem! Best-selling author Barbara Ann Kipfer has created a huge reference that offers cues and clue words to lead writers to the exact...
78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why Itjust Might
AuthorPat Walsh
ISBN0143035657
For the hundreds of thousands who buy writers' guides every year, at last there's one that tells the ugly truth: writers who can't get published are usually making a lot of mistakes. This honest, often funny, book shows them how to identify their own missteps, stop listening to bad advice, and get to work....
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--And How to Avoid Them
AuthorBill Walsh
ISBN0809225352
No writer's or editor's desk is complete without a battered, page-bent copy of the AP Stylebook. However, this not-so-easy-to-use reference of journalistic style is often not up-to-date and leaves reporters and copyeditors unsatisfied.

Bill Walsh, copy chief for the Washington Post's...
Grammar Girl's 101 Misused Words You'll Never Confuse Again
AuthorMignon Fogarty
ISBN0312573375
Millions of people around the world communicate better thanks to Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, whose top-rated weekly grammar podcast has been downloaded more than 30 million times. After realizing her fans were asking the same questions over and over, Mignon decided to focus her attention on...
Learning Teaching
AuthorJim Scrivener
ISBN1405013990
Learning Teaching has been one of the most successful guides to the practice of teaching since it was first published in 1994. Part initial training textbook, part handbook for practicing teachers it is the definitive guide to what happens in the language classroom. Jim Scrivener's approach is not...
The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words
AuthorAnu Garg
ISBN0452288614
Fun book about unusual words.

What do Miss Manners, Elmo, and baseball player Rickey Henderson have in common? They are illeists--people who refer to themselves in the third person. (Henderson left this message on his manager's voicemail: "Kevin, this is Rickey, calling on behalf of Rickey.")...
English Idioms in Use Intermediate
AuthorMichael McCarthy
ISBN0521789575
This book presents and practises over 1000 of the most useful and frequent idioms in typical contexts. This reference and practice book looks at the most colourful and fun area of vocabulary - idioms. This book will appeal to students from intermediate level upwards who want to understand the English...
Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language
AuthorRuth Wajnryb
ISBN0743274342
Have we always "sworn like sailors"? Has creative cursing developed because we can't just slug people when they make us angry? And if such verbal aggression is universal, why is it that some languages (Japanese, for instance) supposedly do not contain any nasty words? Throughout the twentieth century...
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read
AuthorAndré Schiffrin
Post-war American publishing has been ruthlessly transformed since André Schiffrin joined its ranks in 1956. Gone is a plethora of small but prestigious houses that often put ideas before profit in their publishing decisions, sometimes even deliberately. Now six behemoths share 80% of the market...
Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts!
AuthorLynne Truss
ISBN0399250581
Twenty-Odd Ducks by Lynne Truss is a story about punctuation marks. The story emphasizes the importance of punctuation. The book delivers the message regarding punctuation keeping words in group orders and sets the tone for the reader. The story has two pages with each containing a different meaning...
Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning
AuthorSol Steinmetz
ISBN0375426124
"My favorite popular word book of the year"
-William Safire, NY Times 6/22/2008

A fun, new approach to examining etymology!

Many common English words started out with an entirely different meaning than the one we know today. For example:

The word adamant came into...
Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words
AuthorJosefa Heifetz Byrne
ISBN0806504986
This is probably my most favourite book in my collection.

It is exactly what it says it is, a dictionary of obscure, unusual and preposterous words, and its incredibly entertaining.

Here's some of my favourites:

bumfodder - toilet paper; an opprobrious name for a collection...
Garner's Modern American Usage
AuthorBryan A. Garner
ISBN0195161912
The first edition of Garner's Modern American Usage established Bryan Garner as "an American equivalent of Fowler" (Library Journal). With more than 23,500 copies sold, this witty, accessible, and engaging book has become the new classic reference work praised by professional copyeditors as well...
How to Teach Pronunciation
AuthorGerald Kelly
ISBN0582429757
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The Elements of Editing
AuthorArthur Plotnik
I'd like to share what is possibly the most erotic paragraph ever to discuss copyediting:

"An editor's only permanent alliance is with the audience, the readership. It is the editor's responsibility to hook that readership; to edify it, entertain it, stroke it, shake it up—do whatever...
The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
AuthorMichael Harvey
ISBN0872205738
Engagingly written and illustrated with scores of telling examples, this plainspoken how-to book for college writers identifies those qualities that most typically distinguish good writing from bad and provides practical measures for avoiding pitfalls. Included are do's and don'ts for achieving...
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