Name: A dictionary of modern American usage
ISBN: 9780195078534

A dictionary of modern American usage

"This wonderfully written work aims to help people use language so they will use the right words to say what they mean. Garner relies on modern sources rather than historical precedent to determine the current, correct usage. He even advises writers about which words to avoid altogether. Each of the approximately 7,000 entries provides a definition, discusses the usage of the word, provides illustrative quotations, and gives citations to the references and quotations. This is an entertaining, witty, and unpretentious resource that will always come in handy in the public or academic library."----"Outstanding reference sources 2000", American Libraries, May 2000. Comp. by the Reference Sources Committee, RUSA, ALA.

What Hacker News says

throw_away2Nov 2018

This is perhaps my favorite non-fiction of his (which appears in Consider the Lobster): https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

It's a discussion of descriptivist vs prescriptivist grammar and led me to A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, which is a way more fascinating book than its title would imply.

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pklauslerMar 2018

Get a good style guide, read it, and stick to it. I like the Dictionary of Modern American Usage because its recommendations are presented with justifications.

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hkmurakamiMay 2014

I suspect that some may be concerned about referring to such an old tome. Usage does change after all over the years.

I recalled David Foster Wallace's effusive praise [1] for Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage [2] which seems to have similar characteristics to the Webster, but I doubt there's such a convenient digital integration available for this.

If only the world were perfect! ;)

[1] http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner-e...

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throw_awaySep 2009

Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage is a great dictionary filled with just the words we mess up (either through spelling or usage). I'm a word geek & find it interesting just to flip around reading entries.

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Modern-American-Usage/dp/01...

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latexrOct 2023

I’m reading Quack This Way and couldn’t even get through the introduction without veering off multiple times to interesting things that were mentioned. One of them was this interview on The Connection, from WBUR Boston and NPR¹, which I’m still listening to. The link in the book was broken and it took a few trips to both archive.org and archive.today to find a working recording so posting it here, if nothing else so it can be indexed and the SNOOTs² of the world will be able to find it.

¹ Forgive me for the sprinkling of keywords.

² Listen to the recording, or read the book’s introduction or Wallace’s review of Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413013149/https://lafavephi...

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clentaminatorJul 2016

The essay "Authority and American Usage" [1] is an essay concerning prescriptivism vs. descriptivism and the relations between grammar and class/power which (somewhat) masquerades as a review of Bryan Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage [2].

This topic naturally includes discussion about the use of Standard Written English (SWE) at university/college level.

In one chapter the author talks about how he teaches a remedial English class to instruct students in Standard Written English (SWE), and always begins by stating that while there is nothing incorrect about their own dialects, the fact is (and whether they are happy about it or not) SWE is the only way to communicate on a level playing field, and if they were even to consider trying to change this fact they'd have to argue their points through SWE in the first place in order to be taken seriously.

[1] http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garner%27s_Modern_English_Usag...

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