Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors - Bill Bryson [0]
* * *
TITLE PAGE
PREFACE
DICTIONARY
Chapter Aa
Chapter Bb
Chapter Cc
Chapter Dd
Chapter Ee
Chapter Ff
Chapter Gg
Chapter Hh
Chapter Ii
Chapter Jj
Chapter Kk
Chapter Ll
Chapter Mm
Chapter Nn
Chapter Oo
Chapter Pp
Chapter Qq
Chapter Rr
Chapter Ss
Chapter Tt
Chapter Uu
Chapter Vv
Chapter Ww
Chapter Xx
Chapter Yy
Chapter Zz
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUGGESTED READING
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY BILL BRYSON
Intro to Excerpt
An Excerpt from Bill Bryson’s At Home
Outro from Excerpt
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
* * *
This book is intended as a quick, concise guide to the problems of English spelling and usage most commonly encountered by writers and editors. How do you spell supersede and broccoli and accessible? Do I write archaeology or archeology? What’s the difference between a cardinal number and an ordinal number? Is it Capital Reef National Park or Capitol Reef National Park? What did Belize used to be called? Doesn’t Calcutta have a new name now? (It does—Kolkata.) What do we now call the Chinese river that I knew in my school days as the Hwang Ho? In short, what are the answers to all those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can’t quite remember?
It is a personal collection, built up over thirty years as a writer and editor in two countries, and so inevitably—inescapably—it reflects my own interests, experiences, and blind spots. You may not need, as I do, to be reminded that it is Anjelica Huston but Whitney Houston, or have occasion at any point in your life to write the name of the district of Sydney known gloriously and unimprovably as Woolloomooloo. But I very much hope that what follows is broad enough and general enough to be frequently useful to nearly everyone.
To keep it simple, I have freely resorted to certain short cuts. Pronunciations have been simplified. I have scorned the International Phonetic Alphabet, with its dogged reliance on symbols such as ?, e, and , on the grounds that hardly anyone readily comprehends them, and instead I have attempted to convert tricky pronunciations into straightforward phonetic equivalents. Often these are intended as no more than rough guides—anyone who has ever heard the throat-clearing noise that is a Dutchman pronouncing ’s Gravenhage (the formal name of The Hague) will realize what a feebly approximate thing my suggested version is—and I unhesitatingly apologize for any shortcomings in this respect.
I have also been forced on occasion to be arbitrary over spelling. Dictionaries are sometimes remarkably out of step with the rest of the world on certain matters of usage and orthography—in this respect I can cite no better example than the Oxford English Dictionary’s interesting but lonely insistence that Shakespeare should be spelled Shakspere—but there is usually a rough consensus, which I have sought to follow, though I try always to note alternatives when they are freely accepted.
I have tried also to keep cross-references to a minimum. In my view one of the more grating irritants of research is to hunt through several pages looking for “Khayyám, Omar,” only to be told “See Omar Khayyám.” So I have frequently put such information not only where it should be but also where a hurried reader might mistakenly look for it. The price for this is a certain repetition, for which I additionally apologize.
Some issues of style—whether you should write shopkeeper or shop-keeper, for instance—have been deliberately excluded. Such matters often are so overwhelmingly a question of preference, house style, or fashion that my choices would be simply that: my choices. I would suggest that in such instances you should choose what seems most sensible, and strive to be consistent.
In the updating and typing of this new edition, I am hugely indebted to Meghan Bryson and Felicity Bryson Gould, respectively my daughter-in-law and daughter, for their unstinting and good-natured