Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

by Benjamin Dreyer

Remember that Writing Is Not Speaking.

This may be a particular peeve of mine and no one else’s, but I note it, because it’s my book: Name-dropping, for no better reason than to show off, underappreciated novels, obscure foreign films, or cherished indie bands by having one’s characters irrelevantly reading or watching or listening to them is massively sore-thumbish. A novel is not a blog post about Your Favorite Things.*17 If you must do this sort of thing—and, seriously, must you?—contextualize heavily.

It’s 1995, I retrocalculate, and I was relatively green as a copy editor and relatively new to Random House as a production editor and possessed of the arrogance of relative if receding youth and of thinking I knew a lot more than I did.

I must have been insufferable.

Reading fiction aloud highlights strengths and exposes weaknesses. I heartily recommend it.

AD NAUSEAM Not spelled “ad nauseum.”

BUOY, BUOYANCY, BUOYANT That oddish uo, which somehow never looks right, is easy to flip; thus my periodic encounters with “bouy,” “bouyancy,” and “bouyant.”

ELEGIAC Not “elegaic,” a misspelling that makes it into print with mournful frequency.

FUCHSIA Commonly misspelled “fuschia,” a dishonor to the botanist Leonhard Fuchs, after whom the flower (and color) are named.