English Usage Book

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WriteRead

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What would be a good bk for the subject?

I came upon "The American Heritage Book of English Usage" and "Garner's Modern American Usage" (2d ed., Oxford, 2003; formerly A Dictionary of Modern American Usage). I bet there are more.

Thanks,

Dan
 

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There are literally hundreds of usage manuals, some of which are really style guides. The standard books people recommend are Strunk and White The Elements of Style, and Fowler's Modern English Usage, in one of the early editions.

But there are free resources at www.bartleby.com/usage/
 

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Thank you, Medievalist!

Bartelby - this is where I came upon "The American Heritage Book of English Usage".

I have the Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" and the "Chicago Manual of Style".

Those bks are similar in content w the usage bks? Maybe I got it wrong, but what I had in mind, was a bk that will tell me when to use diff words, since English is a sec lang for me, not a grammarian, so to buy another, similar one, would be a waste.

Dan
 

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Style Guides, like Strunk and White, or the Chicago Manual often contain bits of usage manuals because they favor a particular usage when one or more uses are acceptable in terms of grammar. If I were you, I'd look at the manuals used for college composition classes, which are likely to be more useful to you; they contain usage and grammar information, and have lots of examples. You can find them fairly cheaply used--they all seem to cost around 40.00 new. I'm fond of Hacker's Manual for Writers, but frankly, they all have pretty much the same information, just presented in a different style and order.
 

reph

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The Careful Writer, by Theodore Bernstein, has entries on the correct and mistaken uses of a great many words.
 
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