The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and StyleThis authoritative survey of English usage, grammar, and style offers guidance on almost any writing problem imaginable. Arranged in a single, easy-to-use A-Z list, the guide's 1,500 entries include examples and quotations that show not only correct and incorrect usage but also the relative effectiveness of different expressions in context. The guide also presents the opinions of the American Heritage(R) Usage Panel--a group of two hundred prominent writers, scholars, and scientists--who are polled on traditional and emerging usage problems. The panel makes clear when attitudes about a word are changing, when old chestnuts have been laid to rest, and when today's innovations are likely to become tomorrow's standards. This book confronts traditional bugbears, such as disinterested and lay vs. lie, along with a variety of new challenges, such as seeking closure and begging the question. Commonly confused words, such as impinge and infringe, are teased apart. Notes on science terms explain the difference between popular and technical uses of words like relativity and exponential growth. Rulings are given for tough calls on grammatical controversies, redundancy, and parallelism, and sensible guidance is provided on punctuation, capitalization, and other conventions of style. Both readable and well researched, this book is an eminently sensible source of advice on how to use words effectively. |
Common terms and phrases
acceptable action adding adjective adverb American American English appears applied avoid become beginning called capitalized cause century clause comes comma common commonly compound confused conjunction considered constructions contexts correct critics derived describe developed distinction effect elements ending English especially example expression fact force formal French frequently function grammatical Greek indicate language Latin less letter living meaning modify Native natural negative never Note noun object occurs original passive past percent person phrase plural position possessive practice prefix preposition present pronounced pronunciation question reason recent refer rejected relative requires result rule sense sentence similar simply singular sometimes sound speakers speaking speech spelling standard stress suffix suggests survey syllable tense term thing tion traditional United Usage Panel usually variant verb widely word writers