How-to grammar books for writers, be they novelists or university students, come in many shades. Some are preparatory, some are exhaustive, and then there are the most essential guides, the ones that walk through the entire gamut of word usage with insight and wit. “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style” is one of those and it’s the best one I’ve come across. Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, knows his shit in the way powerful practitioners too, and he somehow manages to be both draconian and gracefully ambivalent, as the situation calls for. Peppered with funny but apt footnotes, DE, as I’m sure it shall be called, is a pleasure to read and a treasure trove of nuance. I can’t praise DE highly enough.
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