Product Description

A classic that belongs on the shelf with Roget, Bartlett, and Fowler.

When Modern American Usage was first published in 1966, critics hailed it as the "most high-minded book of its kind since Fowler." The American language has changed since then--but many usage manuals still focus on describing these changes rather than prescribing the rules that help us understand them. This revised edition brings back into use the one American manual that unashamedly declares that we should all aspire to the best in our language--which is often the simplest.

The convenient alphabetical format of Modern American Usage--along with hundreds of cross-references--allows the reader to zero in on troubling words and phrases without having to know whether the problem is one of grammar, style, or syntax. The careful writer will learn how to sidestep the vague, the wordy, the counterfeit, the technical, and the pedantic. With verve and eloquence, Erik Wensberg fends off such guff as "valid priorities," "hands-on agendas," "closure," and all that is "basically viable." He takes account of a generation of changes in American idiom and of attempts to reform the use of pronouns, titles, and phrases to fit shifting ideas of social justice. The result is a book that speaks with easy learning and humor, and will prove valuable for both the experienced writer and the newcomer to our language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #703696 in Books
• Published on: 1966-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

Review
Nobody has discussed these matters with greater lucidity and concision (another linguistic virtue) than Wilson Follett.... You cannot read Modern American Usage in one or two sittings: This is a handbook to be perused for pleasure as well as instruction a few pages at a time, to be savored for its common sense and its many fine positive and negative examples. And, of course, to be consulted as the need arises. -- The Wall Street Journal, John Simon

About the Author
Erik Wensberg has worked as an editor at Esquire and The New York Times Book Review, and has taught nonfiction writing at Columbia University.

Customer Reviews

Excellent! This is an essential guide to proper usage.
Wensberg's revision of Follett's famous guide is essential for anyone concerned with the clarity, style, and literacy of their writing.

An essential complement to a dictionary and grammar primers, a usage guide addresses the finer points of use and misuse of words, style, clarity, and grammar issues. For example, when should you use intensive or intense? What are common mistakes writers make with a, an, and the? What is the proper way to pronounce length?

Somewhat similar to Fowler's famous usage guide, Follett's is an outstanding and essential guide. I find Follett's guide much more readable than Fowler's (The New Fowler's Modern English Usage). Also, Fowler's has a British spin to it (Fowler's English Usage vs. Follet's American Usage).

Fowler's is more in-depth and covers more words, but with much denser and technical text. Follet's can be read for fun; Fowler's strikes me as more of a reference text.

Helpful, elegant, amusing...
An enjoyable book. Erik Wensberg is a master stylist and his remarks on good and bad writing are often amusing and always helpful. Given the quality of the writing, it would be fun to read the book sequentially, but a wonderful system of cross-referencing draws one pleasurably here and there, from "collateral damage" to "euphemisms", and from there to "forbidden words," or "vogue words" like "window of opportunity" or "the suffix -BASHING (corporation-bashing / mother-bashing) [which] makes melodrama of a slighting remark." Comparing Wensberg with Follett, one admires W's editorial imagination and his respect for the "original." In his Preface, he writes that he has "judged every entry in the original text for its value to the present-day reader, omitting some entries, shortening others, and adding a good many new ones [...] Malaprops being as quick to sprout as weeds, I have gathered a new crop to put with the old." This is a marvelous book!

For conservative writers
First I must disagree with the reviewer who calls a noun followed by an apostrophe and an "s" a possessive noun. There is room for legitimate argument here, and I prefer to call such a word a possessive adjective. To me it is far more adjective than noun and so the noun part of it can't be an antecedent for a later pronoun. Therefore, I agree with what the reviser of Follett's book says rather than with what he does. Another man, who was once an English professor at Ohio State (Corbett, I think), and for all I know may be there still, also frowns heavily on the use of a possessive noun or possessive adjective as an antecedent. One must simply find a way to reconstruct passages that tempt one to break this commandment.

I once read Follett's book from cover to cover. The man (not he) was an elegant writer. Nowadays I dip into it to refresh my memory and to find passages to use as arguments in pointing out the writing faults of others.

Description is a fine thing, but I'm a member of the prescriptive school and so am perfectly happy with Follett's edicts. When several people are working together to produce a single book or series of books, they must all be following the same path.

My only objection to Follett's book is the lack of an index. His section titles are not always straightforward or descriptive, so some things are hard to find.