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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Unusual Dictionary: Readable and Stimulating, October 19, 2000
Reference books don't usually serve as bedtime reading or the topic of controversy. Here is an exception. "The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style," by Paul W. Lovinger, is unusually readable and thought-provoking for a book labeled "dictionary."
It clashes with those lexicographers and theorists who contend that speakers of a language cannot go wrong, that many verbal wrongs make a right. Examples of those wrongs are the use of "infer" instead of "imply," and "flaunt" instead of "flout," which some dictionaries accept. In an introductory section headed "Save the Language," it borrows the rhetoric of the environmental movement to warn that English is losing indispensable words because of misuse.
The Penguin Dictionary disavows purism or pedantry--for instance, it does not flatly condemn split infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions. "But it does value precision over fashion, logic over illogic, and grammatical correctness over 'political correctness'" (from the introduction). A good example is from the book's discussion of pronouns and number: Drawing from the abortion controversy, it quotes an advocate of "an individual's right to make a choice about their individual lives"--instead of "her individual life." Comment: "Having erroneously associated 'individual' with 'their,' the speaker proceeded to give that individual a number of 'lives.'" The quotation, incidentally, is one of some 2,000 in the book.
(The count excludes made-up examples, the introduction says-- contrary to the intimation of a reader. He wants the book to be fatter and include a list of sources. That would increase its price but not its usefulness. It has over 500 pages, with the front matter. By the way, another reader condemns the whole book because he disagrees with a statement under "reason, 2." But that sub-entry presents differing views, and most readers should find it reasonable and balanced.)
In exceptionally clear language, this A-Z guide to good English explains principles of grammar and style (such as the parts of speech, active and passive voice, infinitives, modifiers, plurals, punctuation, and tense). It deals with distinctive words that are often misused (e.g., alibi, bemuse, connive, desecrate, dilemma, fortuitous, idyllic, literally, transpire, and unique) and confusing pairs (e.g., can-may, disinterested-uninterested, emigrate-immigrate, eminent-imminent, masterful-masterly, may-might, nauseated-nauseous, prescribe-proscribe, respectable-respectful, that-which, and perhaps the biggest puzzle: who-whom).
Some of Lovinger's entry topics--like Fowler's--are quirky: anachronisms, backward writing, cliché clash, dehumanization, guilt and innocence, joining of words, metaphoric contradiction, quotation problems, range (true and false), reversal of meaning, series errors, synonymic silliness, and verbal unmentionables.
The only objection I have is to the title of "The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style," a mouthful that does not do justice to the liveliness of this volume and could fool people into mistaking it for some stuffy tome on a reference shelf. Humor is sprinkled throughout the book. In an entry on mixed-up clichés, a TV panelist is quoted: "We really have no evidence that Bill Clinton is going to step up to the plate...and really take the bull by the horns." The author comments that maybe the president would have been inspired by a rousing chorus of "Take Me Out to the Bullfight."
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Village Idiot of Usage Manuals, March 30, 2002
This is the most amazingly bad usage manual I know of. The problem is not that Lovinger gives conventional advice, though he does. He can be relied upon to give the company line for most of the usual suspects. The problem is that he tries to go beyond this. He has entries for many words not found in other manuals. This would be a point in his favor were he not wholly incompetent to make original judgments.The possible examples are myriad, but a few will have to serve. Lovinger is weak in English grammar, as illustrated in his entry for "Broadside". He criticizes "A Union Pacific train slammed broadside...into a station wagon..." on the grounds that "unless it leaves its track, a train is not likely to hit anything 'broadside'." This apparently is based on the false belief that an adverb cannot refer to a characteristic of the object of the verb. For example, in "John carefully measured the room" carefulness is a characteristic of John. But in "John measured the room lengthwise" it is the room which is lengthwise, not John. The two constructions can even be combined in one sentence: "John carefully measured the room lengthwise." So Lovinger has implicitly invented a bogus rule of English grammar. Even when he gives correct information it is often in a very unhelpful way. In the article "Plurals and singulars" he notes, correctly, that "coffee, fruit, silk, steel, tea, wheat, and wool are treated as singular except when different types or varieties are considred; then s is affixes and it becomes plural." This would naturally lead to a discussion of mass and count nouns, but no such discussion is to be found. (He has a discussion elsewhere of collective nouns, but collective nouns are not the same as mass nouns.) These words are listed in the sub-entry of "Creatures; peculiarities". This gives the strong impression that Lovinger thinks that mass nouns are an exception rather than a predictable pattern, and that they are restricted to "creatures". At best the unsuspecting reader has an arbitrary list of words to memorize. In the quest to find errors to correct Lovinger frequently fails to read what was actually written. In the entry for "Yiddish" there is this: "A general's autobiography tells of Jamaican family friends 'so close they were considred relatives. 'Mammale and Pappale' we called them. Don't ask me why the Jewish diminutives.' The precise modifier would have been 'Yiddish,' pertaining to the language. 'Jewish' is not a language and not a synonym for 'Yiddish,' although using it that way is a common mistake, rather than a blunder." Apart from the mysterious distinction between "a common mistake" and "a blunder" everything Lovinger wrote there is true and irrelevant. Nothing in the general's text suggests that he is using "Yiddish" as synonymous with "Jewish". The Yiddish language is a subset of Jewish culture: while not all that is Jewish is Yiddish, that which is Yiddish is Jewish. So it is perfectly accurate to characterize a Yiddish diminutive as being "Jewish". Continuing on with the entry, there is this: "Later in the book we read 'In Jerusalem my counterpart..., the Israeli chief of staff, threw a party for me, at which I surprised the guests with some Bronx-acquired Yiddish.' Did the general think that Yiddish was the official language of Israel? It is Hebrew." There is nothing in the quoted text to suggest that the general was at all confused on this point. All that we can infer is that he believed the guests at the party to be surprised by his knowledge of Yiddish. We might suspect that he believed that they would find his knowledge of Yiddish more relevant to them than had he displayed a knowledge of, say, Navajo; he was likely correct in this. The official language of Israel only enters into play in Lovinger's imagination. Lovinger is pedantic in the way that gives pedantry a bad name. Under "Fantastic" he criticizes an introduction to a performance of a Bach prelude and fugue which "called it a 'fantastic' piece. In the context in which it was used, the word could have meant charteristic of a fantasia." Who is going to be confused by this? The listener unfamiliar with musical forms will not make the association and so will correctly interpret the adjective. The listener familiar with musical forms knows that a fugue is completely unlike a fantasia, and so will correctly interpret the adjective. The only listener who will be confused is the one working his way through the music dictionary and currently midway through the letter "f". Next is the truly offensive aspect of the book. The mandate of a usage manual is to advise the reader how to express thoughts well. There is a fine line between this and the manual advising the reader which thoughts ought or ought not be expressed. Lovinger blithely crosses this line without looking back. Under "Daring" he criticizes a news report of "a daring escape from a medium-security facility" on the grounds that "'daring' is a word of praise; it commends one's adventurousness, initiative, boldness, and fearlessness in a risky endeavor....a beter [adjective] would have been 'brazen' or 'imitative'. (The method of escape, by helicopter, had been used before and, still earlier, portrayed in a movie.)" There is no pretense of providing a better way of expressing the thought. Rather, this is a blatant attempt at crude censorship. Here is one last example, illustrating Lovinger's tin ear and propensity for making up rules. Under "Zero and O" we are told that the number should not be pronounced "oh" but rather is "zero" or "cipher" or "naught". The "oh" pronunciation has been perfectly standard English for the past four centuries, so far as I can tell without evoking complaint. Lovinger criticizes an announcer for pronouncing the numbers in the television program "Beverly Hills 90210" as "nine oh two one oh." Umm.... Yeah, right. The reader who wants a recent collection of standard conservative usage manual opinion would do much better with Bryan Garner's "Dictionary of Modern American Usage". The reader unafraid to confront actual evidence even if it might contradict the received wisdom should get "Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage." The Penguin Dictionary should be avoided except as a curiosity.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lovinger v. Garner, August 22, 2000
By A Customer
I bought both Lovinger's book and Bryan A. Garner's book (Oxford UP) for a reference library, and I find Garner's book much more thorough. Just opening up both books and comparing the type sizes and layouts shows how much more information is packed into Garner's book than Lovinger's. Garner is also meticulous about citing where he found his examples. The citations give the usage heft very much like the historical examples given for definitions in the OED. To be fair, Lovinger provides good examples, too, but they don't include the citation and are probably constructions of the author rather than real-world examples. Garner's book stands taller than Lovinger's because it also includes rehtorical and grammatical entries as well as word and usage entries. You won't find an entry for "ergative verbs" or "etymology" or "euphuism," to name just a random few from the Es. Wouldn't you rather have a usage dictionary that contains such things in case you ever want to know more about them? For these reasons, I'd say go with Garner's book.
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