Cassell Guide To Common Errors In English

This book shows you how to examine your writing logically to ensure that it makes sense and is unambiguous, even if you are not an expert in grammar. The examples of errors are collected from newspapers, magazines and radio. However, I think the guide will probably be used mainly by students, amateur writers, and writers whose first language is not English; and the mistakes they make are different from the kind of errors made by journalists.
The title and presentation of the book suggest that it is a comprehensive guide, but it is not. Many common errors are not dealt with, and many of the errors listed are one-off mistakes rather than common errors.
The format of the book is simple: there is a list of examples arranged alphabetically under a headword, with a brief explanation of the problem and the author's suggested remedy. Unfortunately the alphabetical headword system doesn't always work: the word picked out as a headword often bears no relation to the error under discussion.
The author aims to "correct faulty sentences in such a way as to shed light on the original misuse" rather than to produce elegant English. However, many of his re-writes substantially change the meaning of the sentence, and many alter the writer's voice unacceptably. The author includes examples taken from advertisements, but I would have thought that copywriting (like sports writing) is a law unto itself and cannot be made to conform to the "plain English" that the rest of us should aim for. Some of the author's complaints are just irritating - he wants to change "mobile phone" to "portable phone" - and his lack of impartiality and occasional sarcasm are regrettable.
Misuse of gerunds and dangling participles are dealt with very thoroughly in this book, and any reader will certainly be convinced of the benefits of improving all varieties of sloppy writing.
However a serious fault in this book is the extremely poor quality of the proofreading, and it is a shame that Cassell, a leading publisher of reference works, did not invest a little more in this respect, especially in a book which is all about correctness.

This book is in a dictionery style format, making it a useful reference book. It focusses on common words and their usage, but also explains aspects of grammar such as nouns and superlatives. Punctuation is covered to a lessor extent. If it is a comprehensive grammar text book that you are looking for, then this may not be the right book for you.

The book includes examples from newspapers and magazines, showing just how prevalent errors are and, in my view, this is the book's best feature.