The "Times" Guide to English Style and Usage

I learned of this book while reading Lynne Truss's book on punctuation, the best-seller "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". She has a bibliography at the end where she has a list of a number of reference books. From her list I subsequently purchased two of her references including this guide.

The Guide to English Style is not a replacement for the Oxford English Dictionary or similar, but rather it is a short guide for writers to cover popular words and phrases found in magazines and newspapers. It covers words that are commonly spelled in error, or where some guidance is needed concerning the use of these words. Also it has some recommendations on words to avoid since they are over used, or not used properly.

The Guide contains approximately two thousand of the commonly used words all listed in alphabetical order in just under 163 pages. These include for example under "g" the definitions and spellings for glasnost, gobbledegook, Gothenburg, etc.

After this main word list - which is really a mini dictionary - there are seven short sections each one or two pages long, or in a few cases even longer, on The Armed Forces, The Arts, The Churches, The Courts, Politics, Sports, and Titles. The latter sections are to guide the writer such that the proper names and titles are used in a proper manner including the right order. For example we learn that "no wife of a baronet or knight takes her first name in her title unless she is the daughter of a Duke". So it gives the guidelines to keep all of these things sorted out starting with ranks and names in the military.

This is not a book that would be on the top of my list, but it is probably essential if you are writing articles especially in daily papers or magazines in the UK and is a tool to avoid making gaffes.