Garner's Modern English Usage [Hardcover]

Garner's Modern English Usageis one of the most influential style guides ever written for the English language. With more than a thousand new entries, 200 replacement entries, and thoroughly updated usage data, this fifth edition is fully abreast of the times and further establishes the author as the authority on effective writing.The most original and authoritative voice of today's English lexicography presents a fully revised new edition of his beloved usage dictionaryWhen Bryan Garner published the first edition ofA Dictionary of Modern American Usagein 1999, the book quickly became one of the most influential style guides ever written for the English language. After four previous editions and over twenty years, our language has evolved in many ways, and the powerful tool of big data has revolutionized lexicography. This extensively revised new edition fully captures these changes, featuring a thousand new entries and over two hundred replacement entries, thoroughly updated usage data and ratios on word frequency based on the Google Ngram Viewer, a more balanced coverage of World Englishes, not just American and British, and the inclusion of gender-neutral language. However, one thing has not changed: in no sense is this a regular dictionary but a masterpiece of lexicography written with wit and personality by one of the preeminent authorities on the English language. To put it in David Foster Wallace's words, Garner's discussion of rhetoric and style still borders on genius. From the (lost) battle betweenself-deprecatingandself-depreciatingto the misuse ofit'sforits, from the variant spellingpatty-caketaking overpat-a-cakein American English to the singular uses ofthey, Garner explains the nuances of grammar and vocabulary and the linguistic blunders to which modern writers and speakers are prone, whether in word choice, syntax, phrasing, punctuation, or pronunciló