Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

By Bill Bryson

One of the English language’s most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free grammar.

As usual Bill Bryson says it best: “English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where ‘cleave’ can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word ‘set’ has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; where if you can run fast you are moving swiftly, but if you are stuck fast you are not moving at all; [and] where ‘colonel,’ ‘freight,’ ‘once,’ and ‘ache’ are strikingly at odds with their spellings.” As a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s, Bill Bryson felt keenly the lack of an easy-to-consult, authoritative guide to avoiding the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly suggested to a publisher that he should write one. Surprisingly, the proposition was accepted, and for “a sum of money carefully gauged not to cause embarrassment or feelings of overworth,” he proceeded to write that book—his first, inaugurating his stellar career.

Now, a decade and a half later, revised, updated, and thoroughly (but not overly) Americanized, it has become Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, more than ever an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. With some one thousand entries, from “a, an” to “zoom,” that feature real-world examples of questionable usage from an international array of publications, and with a helpful glossary and guide to pronunciation, this precise, prescriptive, and—because it is written by Bill Bryson—often witty book belongs on the desk of every person who cares enough about the language not to maul or misuse or distort it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 17, 2002
• ISBN: 9780767910477

Reviews for Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

[marthajeanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some of this is useful as a reference. Most of it is boring as reading material. It feels like his personal notes on words that bother him, sometimes because he mixes them up, sometimes because others do.Now and again Bryson shows that he doesn't know German. Baron Munchhausen is known to most German-speakers (legend), not 'almost exclusively in medical circles'. Luxembourg is the French form of the name, Luxemburg the German (not anglicized). Both languages are official in the country that calls itself Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg in its own language. Little failures like these in research make me question his other statements.This refers to the 2015 edition.

[literateowl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous book for writing starters or just dipping into word meanings and origins and literary connections.

[oreillynsf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great resource for readers and writers, Bryson dissects common and not so common writing mistakes and clearly explains the correct way to address them. Not lost is Bryson's patented sense of humor, either. ;-)

[harrod_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's Bryson-what's not to love.

[theoclarke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quirky, informative guide to common errors in written English. I found it a useful and enjoyable read but I have never consulted it as a reference book.

[petesmyth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Before finding fame as a travel writer with The Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson had been a sub-editor at the Times struggling with the nuances of the English language. What is the difference between flouting and flaunting; what exactly does it mean to imply and to infer; can one use the word either in reference to more than two alternatives? Unable to find a single, concise guide to which he could refer to for such ‘troublesome words’, Bryson contacted Penguin and offered to write one himself.Troublesome Words, the 2001 revised and updated edition of Bryson’s original 1984 book (The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words), is an A – Z guide to words and phrases commonly misused in print. Drawing from more than 40 respected works on linguistics, Bryson provides advice and suggestions to everyday grammatical problems and helpfully illustrates them with real-life examples of misuse. He explains that culminate, for example, “does not signify any result or outcome, but rather one marking a high point” and cites an a news clipping from The Times which reads “The company’s financial troubles culminated in the resignation of the chairman last June”. The example highlights Bryson’s lesson. A series of financial gains could culminate in the chairman receiving a bonus but financial troubles do not culminate in a resignation. Helpfully, he not only warns against words that are used incorrectly, but also those which are often used redundantly, such as basically; a word which in most contexts “is basically unnecessary, as here.”Unfortunately, the somewhat narrow breadth of the guide does betray its (and Bryson’s) Fleet Street origins. Almost every example of misuse hails from newspaper pieces and, furthermore, usually from the business pages. So Bryson provides the correct spelling for the name of the household products company, Procter & Gamble but no guide to using, for example, the word breadth, as appears at the top of this paragraph (incorrectly as it happens, the phrase used should be “narrow scope”). As such, one can’t help but feel the dictionary would be improved by a slight shift in emphasis toward the general writer.These are minor gripes though, and Bryson is both a thoughtful and entertaining guide. Without bloating the book he peppers his definitions with etymology, anecdotes and, where appropriate, his trademark dry humour. He tells us, for example, that “the belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it”; and that “barbecue is the only acceptable spelling in serious writing. Any journalist or other formal user of English who believes that the word is spelled barbeque or, worse still, bar-b-q is not ready for unsupervised employment’. As such, Troublesome Words is one of those rare things: a reference work which can be dipped into time and again yet remains a joy when read cover-to-cover.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There are a lot of books available for those of us worried about making mistakes in our English. Kingsley Amis, I believed, wrote one, and so too Fowler, whose "Modern English Usage" forms the basis for Bryson's guide to some of the more difficult and irksome - or commonly mistaken - aspects of English today.