Grammar/Usage books ...for me?

Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:33:08 -0500
From: Emily Isaacs
Subject: Favorite big, fat grammar and usage reference book -- for yourself, not students

Folks,

Do you have a favorite grammar and usage reference book for your own use? I am perfectly happy with any number of the handbooks for use in class, but I'm finally read to own a big, fat grammar book that will give me lots of explanations and discussion.

Emily

---

_Breaking the Rules_ by Ed Schuster

---

Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:17:48 -0600
From: Quinn Warnick
Subject: Re: Favorite big, fat grammar and usage reference book -- for yourself, not students

Emily,

I like _Garner's Modern American Usage_ (Bryan A. Garner, Oxford), for precisely the reasons you mentioned: it is LONG on explanation and discussion, without being over pedantic. In fact, Garner begins the book with an essay called "Making Peace in the Language Wars," in which he tries to find some common ground between the "prescribers" and the "describers." I have the 2nd edition, but a 3rd edition just came out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195382757/

I first read about Garner's guide in a wonderful essay by David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present." If you're interested, you can download a PDF version of that essay on this page:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

Good luck finding a guide that works for you!

- Quinn

---

An old one, but not as old as I, is
Quirk, Randolph and Sidney Greenbaum. *A Concise Grammar of Contemporary
English*. New York: Harcourt. 1973. Print.
It is a revision of an even older book *A Grammar of Contemporary
English*.

Huddleston and Pullum's Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is equally big and fat (and useful).

Ron Cowan has written The Teacher's Grammar of English.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Martha Kolln's Understanding English Grammar.

In addition to Chuck Schuster's fabulous Breaking the Rules, I would recommend Steven Pinker's Words and Rules.