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(More customer reviews)I am now a three-edition aficionado of Bryan A. Garner's Modern American Usage (MAU).
I purchased the first edition at the South Tower of the World
Trade Center in 1998.
Then, under more sober circumstances, I purchased the second edition in 2003.
Finally, last week, I became the happy owner of the new Modern American
Usage, Third Edition (MAU 3, for short).
The pleasures from MAU 3 are substantial, with only a few minor
reservations.
First, the major pleasures:
* As with the first two editions, almost every page of MAU 3 brings me
a new wealth of useful reminders and eye-opening information. For
example, readers cannot imagine how pleased I was to learn in MAU 3 about
"Contronyms" (e.g., the two opposed meanings of "scan"), which must
take their place alongside my discovery of "Mondegreens" in MAU 2. One
of my favorite mondegreens, encountered firsthand, is "I led the
pigeons to the flag," an odd mishearing of "I pledge allegiance to the
flag." (I politely told the young "pigeons" reciter about his error,
but he said he liked his version better than the traditional one. It is
certainly funnier.)
* By making MAU 3 taller and wider in format than MAUs 1 and 2, the author
has been able to retain the previous prefaces and essay ("Making Peace
in the Language Wars") while adding a new preface and an essay (funkily
titled "The Ongoing Struggles of Garlic-Hangers," inspired for once by
the otherwise annoying linguist John McWhorter). More important, this
expansive format has allowed Mr. Garner to pack addditional nuggets of
information into his reference book, especially the section called
"Glossary of Grammatical, Rhetorical, and Other Language-Related
Terms." This section, in slightly smaller type, is a miracle of
informative compression, whether focusing on the "schwa" or the "ergative
verb" or "auxesis" or "multiple sentence forms" or "polysyndeton" or almost
anything else. It is a treasure trove of the mainstream and the
esoteric.
* The innovative, five-stage Language-Change Index in MAU 3, far from
being a gimmick, gives readers a true sense of where certain
controversial usages rank along a continuum. With this ranking, readers
gain a perspective on verbal change, from the highly rejectable status
at Stage 1 (e.g., the double negative "unrelentlessly") to the grudging
acceptance at Stage 5 (e.g., "finalize," a jargonic favorite of former
President Eisenhower). Among other things, this Index at Stage 5 is
Mr. Garner's stouthearted attempt to end dead-horse beating. (By the way, his
"Key to the Language-Change Index" is certain to induce the smiles and
laughs of approval in other readers that it did for me. Who says a
language authority's continuum has to be dull?)
* The engaging new essay in MAU 3, "The Ongoing Struggles of
Garlic-Hangers," recognizes that defeatist teachers and hypocritical
linguists are dragging English usage faster than ever into confusion
and decay. No wonder the conciliatory tone that suffused Mr. Garner's essay in
MAU 2, "Making Peace in the Language Wars," has disappeared. After all,
only one descriptive linguist (Peter Tiersma) "conditionally" accepted
the author's strategy for a truce. So Mr. Garner obviously decided a more
confrontational approach was necesssary. Much to his credit, though,
his essay still maintains a characteristic clarity and civility. Above
all, he doesn't flinch from taking on and politely vanquishing linguist John
McWhorter, the quintessential representative of the anything-goes
crowd. Mr. Garner's new aggressive attitude feels right, yet I still worry.
For, at the end of the essay, even as he says he is not "melancholy"
over this declining state of affairs, he seems more embattled than he was in 2003.
More than ever, we must remember, as Wilson Follett's Modern American Usage urges us,
"to maintain the continuity of speech that makes the thought of our
ancestors easily understood, to conquer Babel every day against the
illiterate and the heedless, and to resist the pernicious and lulling
dogma that in language -- contrary to what obtains in all other human
affairs -- whatever is is right and doing nothing is for the best."
In short, Mr. Garner's fine book is more than a usage guide, it is the standard
bearer of a knightly quest. I guess that might make me one of his
Sancho Panzas.
That's what he gets for carrying on the Fowler, Bernstein, and Follett
tradition.
Now for the minor reservations:
* Let's begin with MAU 3's dust cover. There on the left flap, in the
first paragraph, the second sentence begins, "Brimming with brief,
erudite, and even witty entries on troublesome words and phases ...." I
saw the "phases" for "phrases," and my heart fell. Because I know MAU 3
itself is fastidiously edited and proofread, but first-time browsers
would not. Again one finds that a book shouldn't be judged by its dust
cover. Also, remembering Mr. Garner's excellent entry on Sesquipedality, I
question whether the use of "corpora" (see left flap, third paragraph,
line 10) is a bit highfalutin for the fairly simple-and-direct book
description.
* Moving inside MAU 3, I find that the author carefully and correctly gives the
figurative meaning of "delineate" as "to represent in words; to
describe." Then he faults those who wrongly believe that "delineate" also
means "differentiate," placing such a misuse at Stage 1 on his
Language Change Index and consigning it for the time being to
rejection and outer darkness. So far, I agree. But later, in his
estimable entry on Standard English, he writes "the delineation between
Standard English and dialect has to do with grammar, vocabulary,
spelling, and punctuation ...." By using "delineation between" instead
of "differentiation between," Mr. Garner has fallen into a dreaded slipshod
extension and entered Stage 1's Rejection Land.
* Disappointment also reigned when I noticed, in MAU 3, there are not many
illustrative quotations dated after 2003 (the year MAU 2 was
published). To me, MAU 3 was an ideal opportunity to present a
substantial number of new, post-2003 quotes to complement or replace
earlier ones.
* In Mr. Garner's Timeline of Books on Usage, I was surprised to see that Mark
Halpern's Language and Human Nature, though quoted in the MAU 3 essay, "The
Ongoing Struggles of Garlic-Hangers," was not entered in the Timeline
under 2009, the year given for its publication. I assume that
threatening deadlines resulted in that omission. I would also like to
suggest for inclusion Jenny McMorris's biography of Henry Watson
Fowler, The Warden of English, published by Oxford University Press in
2001. It's the only full-length biography on Fowler that I know of (not
"of which I know"). Among other delightful little details in this book,
one reads that "The Times, heading its obituary [of Fowler] 'A
Lexicographical Genius,' declared that Henry 'had a crispness, a
facility, and unexpectedness which have not been equalled.' "
* And, from my "Not Really Garner's Fault Department," I present one last
cavil: the taller and wider MAU 3 does not fit into my (formerly)
handy-dandy, zippered, green book carrier.
Modern American Usage, in its third edition, is now approaching perfection. And though it may never get there, authorial attention to such trifling reservations as mine may help move its fourth edition a bit closer. After all, a noble and daring quest such as Mr. Garner's -- to promote ideal clarity, elegance, and effectiveness in communication -- deserves to reach this loftiest of goals.
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