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A review by robinwalter
Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer
informative
medium-paced
4.0
A truly excellent guide to what it is copywriters do, and how those who write can benefit. He writes with wit and humour and a near-total absence of peevish prescriptivism. I say "near-total" because the one thing he relentlessly attacks is British English, giving as one reason for doing so his proud patriotism.
As someone whose idiolect is more heavily influenced by UK English than US English, his relentless digs at UK English were jarring, out of tonal harmony with the rest of the book, and reinforced for me my conviction that Shaw had it right when he called patriotism "a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy".
Flag-waving fondness for his national L1 aside, this was a great book, one well worth reading
As someone whose idiolect is more heavily influenced by UK English than US English, his relentless digs at UK English were jarring, out of tonal harmony with the rest of the book, and reinforced for me my conviction that Shaw had it right when he called patriotism "a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy".
Flag-waving fondness for his national L1 aside, this was a great book, one well worth reading