Customer Reviews

Common Errors in English Usage 2nd Edition

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I read a review of this book and decided it was a book I have been seeking for a long time. If you are a person that wonders about things like whether to use further instead of farther, or lay instead of lie, this is the book for you. Put an end to bungling the English language . . . Common Errors in English is sure to make you seem a lot smarter that you really are.

This book is a must for anyone with a love of language and an appreciation of its correct use. It is authoritative without being pedantic, and gives due respect to the evolution of our language and our means of expression.

We heard the author of this book, Paul Brians, being interviewed on The Lionel Show on 1260 AM radio. The book lives up to our expectations. It is an excellent text with easy to find phrases that have been used so often that some believe they are legitimate usages of the English language, but they are not. Highly recommended for English majors, teachers, writers, and just plain folks who enjoy this sort of thing.

I am a teacher who runs a website about learning and teaching grammar through sentence diagramming.

I'm happy to add this book to my reference library. It's easy to look up errors, and I enjoy the historical and cultural information that Mr. Brians adds into the entries.

I actually interviewed him for my website and asked him more about the book. If you're interested, you can check it out here:

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Happy Learning!
:) Elizabeth

As another reviewer has noted, the Kindle version of this book includes neither a table of contents nor an index. The book is essentially an extended list of frequently confused or misused words and expressions, with numerous entries that direct the reader to another, related entry elsewhere in the text. These cross-references are not hyperlinked. Without internal hyperlinks, an index, or a TOC, the Kindle version is difficult to navigate. Using it is frustrating and time-consuming. I would avoid purchasing this book for Kindle until or unless the format is improved to include, at the least, a TOC or an index.

Almost six years after the first edition of this book was released, we finally get this second "revised and expanded" edition. And is it worth it? Of course it is! I already wrote a review for the first edition ( Common Errors in English Usage ), so you can read a review of what I thought about the book.

Quick note: An error is when you do not know that you said/wrote something in the wrong way; a mistake is when you DO know you had a slip, even though you know the correct way to say/write the thing correctly.

There are quite a few additions to this edition. You can calculate how many errors were added because the first edition has 250 pages and this new one has 292. Besides that, this new edition is a bit more "cluttered" (my only complaint to be honest, it felt a bit overwhelming and striking to the eyes) than the old one, it has more entries per page. I'd say the new one has 8 entries per page, whilst the old one has 6, in average. For example, on the last pages you can see the "British vs. US English" section. The old edition has 18 entries, but the new one has 31.

There are also many more drawings illustrating (pun intended) the different errors. Said drawings are no longer only in the middle of the page (as in the previous edition), they're basically anywhere on a page. Details like these reflect how much effort was put into this new edition. It's really good, and as with the previous one, quite a laugh! As I hope you already noticed, you have to buy this book!

Edit: This new edition contains over 480 entirely new entries, and over 150 revised ones, along with several new cartoons selected and captioned by Tom Sunner. Some of the revisions expand or clarify the old explanations.... (Taken from the introduction.)

The material is excellent, but the inability to jump to a letter (chapter) of interest makes this book difficult to use. An updated edition shoud be provided (and free of charge to those who have already purchased one).

This thing is really cool. For all the Grammar Nazis out there you can cite your corrections with this nice piece of work. Easy-to-find grammatical errors, humor, and accuracy all in one. Also makes a great educational tool.

This book is arranged in dictionary form, and highlights common errors in word use and spelling. Some are obvious, like there/their/they're, others are more obscure. All are clearly defined, usually with brilliantly illustrative examples, and the author has a humorous, engaging and readable style; this is NOT a dry technical book. It is fun to just read through as if it were a novel. There are also some hilarious illustrations to set off some of the text; I loved the old woodcut of a hunter being attacked by a huge bear - the caption says something like, "For a moment, Karl was confused...was he being attacked by a bear presently or currently?"

A great read. My wife and I quiz each other on trips. Fun to see what we have been saying and writing wrong all these years. This would not be a good reference book nor would I get it to help learn english. This is more of just a fun book that is easy to read and in a fun style.