Bloomsbury Good Word Guide: Answers Everyday Language Problems (Bloomsbury reference) - Tapa blanda

All around us the English language crumbles, becomes less exact, less distinctive, more - well, common. There is nothing to be done about this: language changes with the centuries and always has, but it puts its guardians and teachers in a difficult position. Are they, Canute-like, to attempt to stop the flow? Should they rage against the use of 'hopefully' in the 'sense of hoping that', or to protest when someone is fed up of rather than 'fed up with' something? Certainly it is worth fighting for usages which actually do mean something, in the sense of making what one has to say or write clearer or more accurate - though not at the expense of originality and pith. There are several books around which aim to help us fight the good fight; this latest has nothing new to say, and is actually rather toffee-nosed (attempting to confine 'hopefully' - see above - to 'informal contexts', for instance. Much too late for that, I fear). Other books in the field are both more entertaining and probably more useful (notably Godfrey Howard'sThe Good English Guide. (Kirkus UK)

A guide to punctuation, pronunciation, spelling and grammar plus jargon and buzz words - showing when and how to use them. The entries are listed aphabetically with extensive cross-referencing and appear on two distinct levels - concise answer and more detailed explanation.