4 More Language Resources

In March 2020, I wrote about some of my favorite language resources, including some of my day-to-day go-to’s and some deeper dives. I have some additions!

I’ve since started using Bryan A. Garner’s The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation more often as a grammar resource. I like how Garner’s book is organized and find it clear and easy to read. When I’m working through a grammatical question, I often will compare a few resources, and Garner’s is now part of that collection.

When Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer came out in 2019, it felt like most of the editors I knew were reading it. I was, as usual, late to the party and read it in early 2022. Dreyer has some fun commentary in the footnotes, but he also has some great information. I left a note about using the subjunctive mood in a proofreading project a few days after I started reading it. I’d also recommend this book to anyone who writes or edits fiction – as well as general editors and writers – because he has a chapter devoted to issues that come up in fiction.

Fun fact: I was reading Dreyer’s book during a volunteer session, and one of my fellow volunteers asked if I was in college. No, sir, just a geeky editor who reads these sorts of things for fun.

In summer 2021, I read What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron, which was listed on the ACES Book Corner. This was a book on historical word use, looking at how people have addressed the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun in English, and in the back is a glossary of dozens of terms. If nothing else, it shows how long English speakers have been trying to figure this out.

Speaking of books included in the ACES Book Corner, I bought The Dictionary of Difficult Words, written by Jane Solomon and illustrated by Louise Lockhart, for my niece’s ninth birthday, which she loved. This fun, colorful dictionary has fantastic words and may end appearing on my own on my children’s bookshelf. A great introduction to some of the wonderful words in the English language.

A few language resources

For fun, for work, for learning