Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
Benjamin Dreyer
Once upon a time, I had a grand plan.
Why did I need a plan? Well, despite being wrapped up in words, I have never read a style guide or book on usage. So, when the style guide of our age showed up as a $1.99 digital download I acted. It’s not often opportunity presents itself in such an economically appetizing manner.
Almost instantly the plan came together. I’d read Dreyer. Then I’d walk across the room and pick up the unread Lynne Truss book, you know the one, the best seller with the punch line title, that’s been taunting me for a decade or more. For good measure, I’d work my way through a Patrica T. O’Conner book I’d acquired, as well as the hardbound copy of Strunk & White I’d purchased for the princely sum of 99 cents.
I’d compare and contrast across countries and publishing segments, between decades, centuries, even millennia. If my luck held, I’d probably even learn something. Essentially, it would be an amateur’s version of a type of omnibus article I used to see in The New York Review of Books.
Benjamin Dreyer.
He looks the way an editorial expert should look, dontcha think?
Well, at last I read the Dreyer.
For those not in the know, Benjamin Dreyer held the title of Copy Chief , as well as several other corporate titles, at Random House for many years. Although he’s now-retired, he served in that capacity before and after the firm’s 2013 merger with Penguin. In that role he shaped and enforced the stylistic rules of the house, helping authors realize their vision.
Editing, a renowned copywriter and good friend once said, is a separate undertaking from writing. That distinction has always struck me as reasonably correct even though there’s many an editor who wields a formidable pen. Dreyer, it turns out, belongs in this category.
Allow me a digression. Just as in speaking, all writer’s voices are not the same; some are downright painful, enough so to elicit sympathy for high school English teachers and the grad students teaching Freshman Comp. So, voice is important. Dreyer has a distinct voice.
Albertson is a real place not terribly different or distant from the town I grew up in.
It’s also, to me, a familiar one. Our author hails from very local precincts. He grew up in Albertson, a Nassau County suburb of New York City, that was a bicycle ride away from my hometown. Dreyer’s a bit older than me, but his wise-cracking and cultural references are rooted in the same place. Such things help the medicine go down.
About that medicine. If you’re looking for a usage guide that’s prescriptive, this one may not suit you. Here’s a good example of why I say that. Amid a discussion of diacritical marks, the subject of the diaeresis comes up. If those words starting with ‘di’ look related, they are.
You know what a diacritical mark is even if you don’t know the word. The most obvious example is an accent mark, but tildes and circumflexes and cedillas regularly turn up in otherwise English-language publications because a writer uses a word from French or Spanish or some other language where the orthographic and typographic traditions have evolved to indicate when a letter has a different sound than usual.
English, a blunt-force simplifying language as I like to say, has mostly done away with such nonsense—with one exception. When two of the same vowels appear next to each other, usually in separate syllables, the historical way to indicate a difference in how the second occurrence is sounded is to use what is know as a diaeresis. Here are two examples to illustrate how it’s used: coöperate and reëntry.
Diacritical marks in the wild, so to speak.
Before we proceed, let’s acknowledge that those two little dots turn up in a few other places: Single syllable names where adjacent vowels do not form a dipthong, such as Zoë. Surnames, where an unusual vowel sound is required, such as Brontë. A few odd single-syllable words with adjacent, differently sounded vowels, such as naïve and noël. And words borrowed from German, like doppelgänger or kölsch.
English-language readers in the US rarely see a diaeresis in the wild. You’re more likely to see co-operate than coöperate and even the hyphenated version is turning into a typographical Sasquatch. The New Yorker, though, persists in using the diaeresis.
Today’s custodians of that publication don’t answer to anyone on house style. But here’s Dreyer on the subject, in what passes for a prescriptive chapter entitled “67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) With Punctuation:”
“A certain magazine famously—notoriously, you might say, and I do—would have you set a diaeresis—the double-dot thing you might tend to refer to as an umlaut—in words with repeat vowels, thus: “preëxisting,” “reëlect.” That certain magazine also refers to adolescents as “teen-agers.” If you’re going to have a house style, try not to have a house style visible from space.”
That’s as good an example as any of why Dreyer’s English is more a fun read than a rule book. Jokes and snark abound. There are plenty of gossipy bits about the publishing industry in general, and authors in particular (some of whom even remain anonymous). There’s enough autobiographical material for us to understand where he’s coming from.
More importantly, the man knows his craft. We live in a world in which the importance of craft is continually discounted. Acquiring facility in any craft-based undertaking—writing, cooking, performing—requires time and effort. When time is money it’s easy to see why such investment gets called into question.
Henry James
1843-1916
A man with a lot to say about language.
At the start of the chapter noted above, Dreyer includes an epigram from Henry James. It reads, “Dogmatizing about punctuation is exactly as foolish as dogmatizing about any other form of communication with the reader. All such forms depend on the kind of thing one is doing and the kind of effect one intends to produce.”
You could easily change the word “punctuation” to “usage” and apply it to the entire book. That would be consistent with the aim set forth in Dreyer’s subtitle. What he’s given us is, indeed, an utterly correct guide to clarity and style. It’s just not the utterly correct guide.
By now, I’ve dipped into the other titles I mentioned at the outset. I think all of the authors would probably agree with my rewrite of James. In the end, as with so many things, writing is about communication. Rules can’t help with that, only time spent working on and thinking about the craft will.
Dreyer will give you more than a few things to think about.
Once again I have sojourned with one of America’s earliest literary figures, although a better word might be travailed. There’s no way around it, I find reading 
Not even six months ago, I 
Lately, I seem to be making a lot of excuses. Many starts, few finishes. A lack of sticktoitiveness that may eventually call my birthright citizenship into question.
Like many marketing professionals, I’ve collected all sorts of verbal flotsam over the decades. After all, you never can tell when you’ll need a reasonable-sounding bromide or impossible-to-source statistic to derail a discussion that’s gotten out of hand.
I hope I’m not the only person exhausted by the incessant need to find things we can’t agree on. That, my friends, is a choice.
Waiting to enter the 
That’s Artificial Intelligence, the next big thing that’s going to transform us. At least that’s the way futurists and tech visionaries have been telling the story 
Something tells me I shouldn’t ignore our secular mid-winter national holiday. But like almost everyone else, I’ve got to prep for the party!
Newsletters are not new, though the word itself only first appeared in 1903.
My grandmother used to say, “Blessed are they that go in circles, they shall be called wheels.”
A year that began in turmoil appears to be gearing up to end in a similar state.
We live in binary times.
I’ve always thought the purpose of a book, any writing, really. is to prompt one to think. Or think anew.
As tortured paths go, any road that begins in the working-class precincts of the northeastern 
Wistful. The word itself evokes the feeling. Just try to say it without sighing.
I’m not playing coy in not noting the date. But I am aiming to convey a sense of indeterminacy. It is August, of that I am certain. Yet the actual date itself seems to not matter much at all.
I spend a lot of time thinking about reading. Not just because I don’t want to bore you, but because I’m paid to think about how to turn words into cold hard cash.
An Honest Con 