Garner's modern English usage
by Bryan A. Garner · first published 2016
42% recommend58% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Thorough, opinionated guide to American English usage, covering disputed words, grammar, and shifting usage over time; readers find it readable and fascinating despite the dry subject. Recommended to writers and editors.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…have a look at: Williams and Bizup, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace And, for everything you ever wanted to know about standard American English usage (and how it’s shifting over time!), there is Garner’s Modern English Usage, which sounds dry but is actually fascinating (and inspired this brilliantly controversial review by David Foster Wallace: http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...).
on “E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75” ↗Garner's Modern English Usage is the final word on grammar, as far as I'm concerned. Other dictionaries are pathetic postmodern excuses for language guides.
on “Jeff Bezos' annual shareholders letter” ↗The latest edition covers non-American English too, so it's now "Garner's Modern English Usage". I first learned of this book from David Foster Wallace's review of the first edition in Harper's Magazine: https://www.webcitation.org/6FU8Zx2N0?url=http://instruct.we... I agree it is excellent,…
on “You’re probably using the wrong dictionary (2014)” ↗…rules, great section on redundancies) • Chicago Manual of Style (in general, the core style of book and magazine writing) • Associated Press Stylebook (in general, the core style of newspaper writing) • Garner's Modern English Usage, Bryan A. Garner • Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage • Dictionary of American Idioms, Maxine Tull Makkai Not about writing, but hilarious and snobby and awesome -- great airplane reading:…
on “Ask HN: Non-technical books for technical people?” ↗…this ambiguity is nearly always a distraction from the primary purpose of the conversation (as it is here), rightfully or not, pragmatically it is better to use terms that steer clear of it. See Bryan Garner's Modern English Usage for fuller advice on safely navigating this linguistic and sociocultural terrain.
on “DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment” ↗+1 for an English usage guide. I prefer the updated Garner's Modern English Usage because it caters for the broad church of English not only the USican dialect. Also, +1 for a thesaurus. I keep a dead tree Roget's handy – he's buried just down the road – and macOS provides the Oxford…
on “Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?” ↗…thought he’d never reply but he actually did. His reply had a bunch of good advice, and writing a lot was one of them. The other recommendations I got were these books: * A sense of style - Pinker * Garner's Modern English Usage Hope that helps someone else as much as it’s helped me.
on “Just Write” ↗…rules, great section on redundancies) • Chicago Manual of Style (in general, the core style of book and magazine writing) • Associated Press Stylebook (in general, the core style of newspaper writing) • Garner's Modern English Usage, Bryan A. Garner • Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage • Dictionary of American Idioms, Maxine Tull Makkai Not about writing, but hilarious and snobby and awesome -- great airplane reading:…
on “Common Bugs in Writing” ↗I notice section 5: Grammar and Usage is written by Bryan A. Garner. He's the author of the eponymous Garner's Modern English Usage, now in its fifth edition. Highly recommended.
on “The Chicago Manual of Style” ↗1. Infinite Jest 2. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic 3. Garner's Modern English Usage
on “Ask HN: What books are you currently reading?” ↗Garner's Modern English Usage recommends the plural form, and cites a 7:1 current usage ratio in favor of plural.
on “Bacteria can travel thousands of miles through the air on their own” ↗…Webster's 1913 does appear to regard "gender" as exclusively a grammatical quality, so far as definitions related to this topic go. So the modern usage may not be quite that old. [EDIT] huh, whaddaya know, Garner's Modern English Usage puts the move to "gender" in places where "sex" would previously have been used (to refer to all or to any part of the whole deal, not just the biological bits) as right around when I first encountered…
on “Men View Their Ex-Partners More Favorably Than Women Do: Study” ↗Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th edition) acknowledges didn’t used to as “fully accepted” (Stage 5) and notes that it was almost twice as common in journalistic usage. There’s long been open debate among linguists about what might…
on “Unix didn't use to support '#!', a brief history” ↗This is what I can gather about "fewer versus less" and "myriad" from my Garner's Modern English Usage. Fewer emphasizes number; less emphasizes quantity. So, I would ask myself if I prefer saying the number of bugs or the quantity of bugs, and then choose accordingly. I prefer number, here. On account…
on “A list of developer questions to ask prospective employers” ↗…fashionable bad habits of the moment propagated so vigorously by our social media. > ... good of a team member ... "The word 'of' often intrudes where it does not belong, as in 'not that big of a deal'" - Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th edition, page 647.
on “Things I’ve learned in my 20 years as a software engineer” ↗