Common Errors in English Usage
Book Review

By Dale Farris Vice-President, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club March 2004 Author and English (Ph.D., Indiana University) professor Brians ("Modern South Asian Literature in English," "Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France"), presents the book version of his popular Web site, Common Errors in English, an English usage guide which attempts to be helpful and entertaining without overwhelming the reader with technical detail. The author's Web site has been looked at by more than 1.5 million visitors, and many of the viewers requested a "portable" version of the site to keep with them. This marvelous book is the author's response to these requests, providing in book form the always valuable advice found at his Web site. What's Different About This Usage Guide? Many readers may be aware of the many other guides to English usage that are now available. However, "Common Errors in English Usage" is unusual in a number of other ways, besides having originated on the World Wide Web. Because it concentrates on the most common errors, it’s much shorter—and not incidentally, cheaper—than most, though the author does include some oddities that he considers especially interesting or which are simply pet peeves. The guide makes no pretense to exhaustively exploring complex topics, limiting itself to pointing out the most commonly encountered problems and giving hints for avoiding them, using a minimum of technical terminology. This is the equivalent of a first-aid manual, not of the Physician’s Desk Reference. The book also avoids discussing most common misspellings, leaving the correction of such slips to your spelling checker, concentrating instead on linguistic confusions your computer won’t catch. It discusses many casual, slangy forms that are beneath the notice of some of the more high-toned usage guides. It incorporates up-to-date comments on words and phrases from the world of the Internet and from other technologies. It provides illustrative examples written in the sort of English familiar to most people likely to use this book. When writing a book about common errors, it would be pointless to select learned examples a general audience would not relate to. It also places the primary discussion of words and phrases alphabetically under their erroneous forms, so you don’t need to know the correct forms to look them up. A cross-reference is given at the expected location to guide you if you do know the correct form. It’s written in a chatty, informal tone designed to take the edge off what could otherwise be an unpleasant barrage of criticism. It makes abundant use of the first- and second-person voice to create the effect of an informal chat rather than a pompous lecture. Organization of Book The organization of this book emphasizes ease of use by the student, with the bulk of the material provided in 224 pages of explanations of the alpha-sorted listings. In addition, author Brians has provided 13 categorical listings of the entries, including the following: Commonly Confused Expressions Of Foreign Origin Grammar, Spelling, and Style Homonyms Commonly Misspelled Mangled Expressions Inexact Words & Phrases Pronunciation Problem Prepositions Redundancies Commonly Misused Expressions American English vs. British English Misheard Expressions These categorical listings can be used as the first place to look for information in the book. When readers have need for an English usage guide, usually this means they have a question about the correct usage, spelling, or pronunciation of a word or phrase that leads them to a guide. In this case, these categorical listings will be a super tool for help in finding first what is of concern, and then looking for the information in the alphabetical listings. Textbook Web Site In its first three years the author's original English usage errors site was visited more than a million times. If you search for the word "English" in Google, which gives a measure of popularity by ranking its results in order of the number of links other people have created to them, the author's site turns up twice, both high in the list of hits, because many people still link to the old, many years out-of-date address, instead of the correct current address www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors. Add the two together, and this would seem to be the most commonly linked-to site on the Web for "English." The textbook is available at the following Web site: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors Target Readers This book is written for anyone who regularly writes for enjoyment or for a living, and is a sure bet for all English instructors and students. Any professional involved in copy editing for newspapers or periodicals will also want to add this resource to their bag of tricks that contains other English usage guides. Recommendation Once again, this super publisher, Franklin, Beedle & Associates (FBA), shines with this super addition to their already marvelous inventory of titles. With this imprint from William, James & Co., that focuses on quality resources for writing, FBA has entered a niche market of unique interest in tools to help further the advancement of communication and the continual improvement in our use of English. Book Contents 256 pages; introduction; illustrations; 13 category listings Author Paul Brians About the Author Paul Brians is a professor of English at Washington State University. His Web site, Common Errors in English ahs been recommended by BBC Online, Yahoo! Internet Life magazine, USA Today, refdesk.com, the Seattle-Times, and many other periodicals and publications. ISBN 1-887902-89-9 List Price $13.00 (paperback) Publisher Contact: Christine Collier Marketing Representative William, James & Co. (An Imprint of Franklin, Beedle & Associates, Inc.) www.wmjasco.com Franklin, Beedle & Associates, Inc. 8536 SW St. Helens Drive, Suite D Wilsonville, Oregon 97070 1-800-FBA-BOOK 1-503-682-7668 FAX 1-503-682-7638 ccollier@fbeedle.com www.fbeedle.com