Sentence examples for usage book from inspiring English sources

Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (Broadway, slim hardcover, $20) is a usage book with a nice sense of differentiation.

PAGE 84 BOOK REVIEW A USAGE BOOK Delights in Language Roy Blount Jr. wrote "Alphabet Juice," which is probably all some people need to know.

He asks, for instance: "Of what utility is a usage book to some writer – of fiction or nonfiction?" In turn, Wallace talks about his students, a hard drive metaphor, and why a usage book "is one of the great bathroom books of all time".

Mr Johnston is not convinced by hundreds of usage books, but Mr Henderson is not convinced by tens of thousands of Wikipedia entries.

Truss keeps her tone light, leaving forthright didacticism and hard-and-fast rules to existing usage books like The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style.

The linguist Arnold Zwicky has called the most persistent of these "zombie rules": like the two above, they've been shown as bogus in many good usage books, yet still survive thanks to many a provincial schoolmarm.

The surprising result was that the "good" selection had relatively more verbs and adverbs, and the "bad" writing, relatively more nouns and adjectives.How can usage-book writers have failed to notice that good writers use plenty of adverbs?

Grammar books by Mr Pullum himself, by Bryan Garner (a lawyer and respected usage-book writer), by Grammar Girl (a popular and admirable grammar populariser) all get the same rap.

Interestingly, The Times's "Manual of Style and Usage," a book used by editors and reporters in the newsroom, makes a point of saying to be cautious in using this word.

He outed himself while writing in Harper's on Bryan A. Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage, a book, he says, that serves to confirm its author's "SNOOTitude while undercutting it in tone".

With this new feature, the startup wants to boost usage numbers, book discovery and retention.