Recommendations from our site
“I love language and languages but have always been quite confused by grammar. Why are some things allowed in English and others not? This book finally helped it all fall into place. You’ll also find out lots of interesting facts about words. Did you know that buxom used to mean obedient? Or that it’s OK to say ‘Can I?’ rather than ‘May I?'” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: Favourite Nonfiction of 2018
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“Where prescriptivists insist on the observance of certain linguistic norms—not splitting infinitives, never ending a sentence with a preposition—Mr Greene shows that these so-called rules are little more than arbitrary stylistic preferences imposed upon English earlier in its history.”
Our most recommended books
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Garner's Modern English Usage (5th edition)
by Bryan A. Garner -
Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary
by K. M. Elisabeth Murray -
A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words
by John Camden Hotten -
The Collected Papers of Henry Bradley
by Robert Bridges -
Slang To-day and Yesterday
by Eric Partridge -
The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary
by Simon Winchester
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