Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words Quotes

“Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of 'prior to.' To paraphrase Bernstein, if you would use 'posterior to' instead of 'after,' then by all means use 'prior to' instead of 'before.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“untimely death is a common but really quite inane expression. When ever was a death timely?”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“revert back is commonly seen and always redundant: ‘If no other claimant can be found, the right to the money will revert back to her’ (Daily Telegraph). Delete back.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“needless to say is a harmless enough expression, but it often draws attention to the fact that you really didn’t need to say it.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“growth. Often used contrarily by economists and those who write about them: ‘It now looks as if growth will remain stagnant until spring’ (Observer); ‘… with the economy moving into a negative growth phase’ (The Times). Growth obviously indicates expansion. If a thing is shrinking or standing still, growth simply isn’t the word for it.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“future. As an adjective, the word is often used unnecessarily: ‘He refused to say what his future plans were’ (Daily Telegraph); ‘The parties are prepared to say little about how they see their future prospects’ (The Times). In both sentences, and nearly all others like them, future adds nothing and should be deleted.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“disturb, perturb. They can often be used interchangeably, but generally the first is better applied to physical agitation, the second to mental agitation.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“blueprint as a metaphor for a design or plan is much overworked. If the temptation to use it is irresistible, at least remember that a blueprint is a completed plan, not a preliminary one.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“avenge, revenge. Generally, avenge indicates the settling of a score or the redressing of an injustice. It is more dispassionate than revenge, which indicates retaliation taken largely for the sake of personal satisfaction.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“amoral, immoral. Amoral describes matters in which questions of morality do not arise or are disregarded; immoral applies to things that are evil.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“An is indisputably correct before just four words beginning with ‘h’: hour, honest, honour and heir.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“Never forget that no one really has the right to tell you how to organize your words.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“Many, for example, doggedly avoid split infinitives in the conviction that it endows their sentences with superior grammar. (It does not.)”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“The physicist Richard Feynman once remarked that every time a colleague from the humanities department complained that his students couldn’t spell a common word like seize or accommodate, Feynman wanted to reply, “Then there must be something wrong with the way you spell it.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“The result is a language that is wonderfully fluid and accommodating, but also complex, undirected and often puzzling—in a word, troublesome.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“There is something in what he said. English is a merry confusion of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“sclaim”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“The belief that "and" should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that's all there is to it.”
― Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right

“very should be made to pay its way in sentences. Too often it is used where it adds nothing to sense (‘It was a very tragic death’), or is inserted in a futile effort to prop up a weak word that would be better replaced by something with more punch (‘The play was very good’).”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“together with, along with. With in both expressions is a preposition, not a conjunction, and therefore does not govern the verb. This sentence is wrong: ‘They said the man, a motor mechanic, together with a 22-year-old arrested a day earlier, were being questioned’ (The Times). Make it ‘was being questioned’. A separate danger with such expressions is seen here: ‘Barbara Tuchman, the historian, gave $20,000 to the Democrats, along with her husband, Lester’ (The New York Times). How Lester felt about being given to the Democrats wasn’t recorded.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“successfully. ‘Japanese researchers have successfully developed a semiconductor chip made of gallium arsenide’ (Associated Press). It was thoughtful of the writer to tell us that the researchers had not unsuccessfully developed a gallium arsenide chip, but also unnecessary. Delete successfully.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“second largest and other similar comparisons often lead writers astray: ‘Japan is the second largest drugs market in the world after the United States’ (The Times). Not quite. It is the largest drugs market in the world after the United States or it is the second largest drugs market in the world. The sentence above could be fixed by placing a comma after ‘world’.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“replica. Properly, a replica is an exact copy, built to the same scale as the original and using the same materials. To use the word when you might better use ‘model’, ‘miniature’, ‘copy’ or ‘reproduction’ devalues it, as here: ‘Using nothing but plastic Lego toy bricks, they have painstakingly reconstructed replicas of some of the world’s most famous landmarks’ (Sunday Times).”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“pyrrhic victory is not, as is sometimes thought, a hollow triumph. It is one won at a huge cost to the victor.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“put an end to is an expression to which one might usefully do just that. Make it ‘stop’.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“plan ahead. ‘[The] keys to success are to plan ahead, to choose manageable recipes and to cook in batches’ (The New York Times). Always tautological. Would you plan behind?”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“personal, personally. When it is necessary to emphasize that a person is acting on his own rather than as a spokesman or that he is addressing people individually rather than collectively, personal and personally are unexceptionable. But usually the context makes that clear and the word is used without purpose, as it was here: ‘Dr Leonard has decided to visit personally the Oklahoma parish which is the centre of the dispute …’ (Daily Telegraph). He could hardly do otherwise. Personal in many other common terms – personal friend, personal opinion, personal favourite – is nearly always equally redundant.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words

“period of time. A curiously irresistible expression for many writers, as here: ‘Marcos claimed that the seizures could be expected to continue for a considerable period of time’ (Sunday Times). Make it either ‘a considerable period’ or ‘a considerable time’. Both together are unnecessary.”
― Bill Bryson, Troublesome Words