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Best book on grammar/style??

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SkywardGnost
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Best book on grammar/style??

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Hello. I've been shopping around recently for a good book on grammar/style

I already own The Elements of Style, but I wanted something more...substantial...


So what are your favorites? Especially on style, since I'm less concerned about precision and more about clarity, but precision is fine as well, just be sure to distinguish.
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Cattleman
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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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An interesting request. I am not sure if the following are what you are looking for :? but of the several books on writing and writing style on my bookshelf, I found these two to be the most helpful. :)

On Writing Well, An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction by by William Zinsser, Harper & Row (1970); and

On Writing by Stephen King (Yes, that Stephen King) :wink: , Scribner (2000).

I hope they are what you are looking for and may be of some use to you. :)
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SkywardGnost
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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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I've actually read On Writing and it didn't feel like a guide on writing or grammar to be honest. It was more of a biography sprinkled with a tip here or there. But I will check out the Zinsser book.

I'm looking for something along the lines of a rules of style/grammar kind of thing.

Thanks!
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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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The Well-Crafted Sentence: A Writer's Guide to Style by Nora Bacon is an excellent primer on the subject.
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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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I swear by the Oxford Style Guide. But as with all things language the style guides do not see things uniform. What is right according to Elements could be different in Oxford. So it's preference, but I prefer Oxford.
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DWill

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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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Take a look at Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss. It's exclusively about punctuation, but it's surprisingly entertaining and does improve appreciation for syntax as well.

Prescriptiveness in grammar and writing is falling by the wayside, it seems. I don't know whether this is good or bad. I become irritated with both rule-mongers and people who don't know the rules. When I tried school teaching as a younger person, I tried to tell students that the word "ain't" is perfectly fine grammatically; it just isn't considered to be standard usage. They didn't like hearing that. Same when I told them it was okay to start a sentence with "but" or "and." They wanted to believe what their previous English teachers had drummed into them.
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Re: Best book on grammar/style??

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I swear by The Little English Handbook by Edward P.J. Corbett.
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