Robert Lane Greene

After reading Babel, which centres the colonies that Britain exploits linguistically and otherwise in the name of Empire, I couldn’t get behind the first chapter of this guide, which trots out the line about short Anglo-Saxon words being clearer and therefore “better”. The better word is the right one for the situation. I also found some of the usage recommendations unclear in their reasoning: for example, the guide says that it’s “wiggle your hips” but “wriggle room”, with no further explanation. I have never heard of “wriggle room” in my LIFE. And there are some “do as I say, not as I do”s: the guide says to avoid Latin words but then uses (qv) (quod vide, refer to) to refer to items in the same chapter.

I did appreciate the pointers on writing carefully about numbers and statistics (especially the tricky “grew by 100%” and “fivefold”, which often do not mean what the casual reader thinks they mean), and I liked when the guide contained examples of The Economist itself broke its own style guidelines (the letter to the editor about the multiple movie references in headlines was especially good). And there’s a really comprehensive chapter on how to write in English about people from a wide variety of countries. But overall, I didn’t finish reading this, and tone of the book was enough to put me off that I wouldn’t recommend it. Dreyer’s English is funnier and more flexible.… (more)

A look at various ways in which people try to control or "tame" language (especially English) by imposing unnatural and artificial rules on it, attempting to stop it from changing, or reducing it to one Only Right Way of speaking, and why such attempts are generally both wrong-headed and useless. Along the way, the author takes some entertaining shots at self-appointed grammar experts who don't actually know what they're talking about, looks at how politicians use language to try to manipulate people (although often not as well as we might fear), explains the difficulties of computer translation, and samples some artificially invented languages, among other things.

There's not actually a whole lot here that was new to me, but Lane is good enough at coming up with interesting examples and vivid, useful metaphors that it still managed to feel fairly fresh. And there's a lot to be said, I think, for the clear and careful way in which he avoids a simplistic blanket condemnation of anyone who smacks of linguistic prescriptivism, but instead takes a nuanced approach, one that has little time for people who make false claims about how language works or unrealistic ones about how it should work while firmly embracing those who offer good, informed advice about formal writing.… (more)