As I said elsewhere I have been rereading Bill Bryson's style guide Troublesome Words. It's a bit of a mish-mash of notes on commonly misspelled words, grammatical advice and word usage advice. The bulk of it is made up of this last category.

Now, even as a fan of Bryson, I have to admit that it contains quite a lot that I find rather odd or downright wrong. It's certainly not a usage guide that I'd follow.

Anyway, author aside, I picked out ten random bits of advice by flicking on a few pages each time. In each case I have chosen a word usage and written a sentence to illustrate his "point".

Here then, for comment on the English rather than the competence of the author, are ten sentences. In each case the two questions I would like to ask are the same.

a) What, in the sentence, does he object to?
b) Is he right in objecting?

Note, there may be other "errors" introduced by my construction of the examples.

1. He admitted to several mistakes.
2. He remained celibate throughout his marriage.
3. There was been an epidemic of bovine tuberculosis among the herds of Europe.
4. She said that her gender was holding her back.
5. Do you see that individual over there?
6. I saw a koala bear at the zoo.
7. He researched the topic in meticulous detail.
8. We must put an end to it.
9. Let's keep him under close scrutiny.
10. The planes zoomed down out of the sky.

There is similar advice, for good or ill, given on almost every page, though I haven't found any errors in the spelling suggestions.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
1. He admitted to several mistakes.

The objection is that "admit" should not be followed by "to". imo Bryson is wrong; MWDEU says it is regularly followed by "to" when it means "to make an acknowledgement".

There are some I don't get, like #2. #3 of course is a little awkward this way, though you can figure out the meaning. It should be "herds of cattle in Europe."

Actually the word he objects to is "epidemic", any other awkwardness is all mine.

goofy has got #1 and, like goofy, I also think the advice wrong. Common usage ("admit to" has almost four million ghits") allows "admit to".

Incidentally he would also object to the above sentence because he would find the "also" to be superfluous combined with the "like".

Presumably he dislikes "celibate" in No 2 on the grounds that it means "unmarried". However, again according to AHD, he's wrong.

And arnie correctly identifies what he finds wrong with #2. And again we are agreed that the advice is wrong.

two down, eight to go.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

No. 3 couldn't be because an epidemic only applies to humans in his view, could it? The -demic part comes from the Greek demos, "people". Surely that's a nonsense.

No. 4 must be the use of "gender" instead of "sex". I agree with him to some degree, but modern usage disagrees.

Good innit?

quote:

only people can suffer an epidemic (the word means "in or among people"). An outbreak of disease among animals is epizootic.

Arnie gets another one.

And another!

quote:

it became a nineteenth century euphemism for the convenience of those who found "sex" too disturbing a word to utter. Its use today in that sense... is old-fashioned and over-delicate.

Only half marks to arnie on this one because Bryson's objection appears to be that it was OK in the nineteenth century but that it's against modern usage. A bizarre argument at best.

5. is the use of "individual" instead of "person". Again, I don't like it much but it is commonly used.

Racing through them now arnie.

Apparently it is "casual and inelegant".

No. 6 is that it's not a bear. He is right there, but again a lot of people do talk about koala bears. Outside Australia, I imagine people will still call it a bear however much zoologists and others protest.

And an "aardvark" is neither a bear nor a pig in spite of also being known as both "antbear" and "earth pig".

But nevertheless you have correctly identified another of his objections. It should, he insists, be referred to only as a "koala".

For 7. I can only imagine that he's objecting to "meticulous detail" because "meticulous" is redundant. It seems to me OK, and a Google search for it (in quotes) brought up about 108,000 hits, so it seems common enough.

Yay!
arnie has failed to identify the alleged objection to "meticulous".

Anybody else want to take a guess at it?

" 7. He researched the topic in meticulous detail.
I have no problem with the sentence. But Bryson does. I would imagine that he would say that "in meticulous detail" should have been "meticulously."

quote:

8. We must put an end to it.

Perhaps he objects to the idiom "put an end to" and thinks the sentence should be "We must end it."

quote:

9. Let's keep him under close scrutiny.

"Close scrutiny" in 9 is redundant, since scrutiny by definition is close.

quote:

10. The planes zoomed down out of the sky.

Planes don't zoom down; they only zoom up. M-W Dictionary.Com

Perhaps he'd like swooped or dived.

Arnie, you are too good for me.

I still object to "epidemic," though. Perhaps at one time it meant people, but the word has clearly evolved. Some dictionary definitions are: "Widely prevalent: epidemic discontent; An outbreak of a contagious disease that spreads rapidly and widely; A rapid spread, growth, or development: an unemployment epidemic."

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
7. He researched the topic in meticulous detail.

I think the complaint here is that "meticulous" should not mean "painstakingly careful", it should contain some connotation of timidity, and its current "painstakingly careful" sense lacks that. I don't agree.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

quote:

Originally posted by goofy:


... "meticulous" should not mean "painstakingly careful", it should contain some connotation of timidity, ...

If Bryson thinks that he is really out-of-date since that meaning has been obsolete for about 200 years. The OED Online gives two meanings of "meticulous":

1. Fearful, timid. Obs.; first citation c. 1540
2. Originally: overcareful about minute details, overscrupulous. Subsequently usually in more positive sense: careful, punctilious, scrupulous, precise; cited from 1827.

Taking those last few in one post then. The objections as listed are:

goofy hits number seven most closely

Bryson suggests that

quote:

unless you intend to convey a negative quality, it is better to use scrupulous, careful, painstaking or some other synonym

He hedges by saying this is the opinion of "some usage books" but then he gives the advice above himself.

The full entry on "put an end to" is

quote:

put an end to is an expression to which one might usefully do just that. Make it "stop".

Coincidentally by the time I had reached this point in the book I too was saying "Make it stop!". I do not believe that "put an end to" has exactly the same meaning as "stop". "Stop" is a neutral term, "put an end to", for me makes it a rather more proactive and deliberate act.

Tinman got closes to that one and hit the next one perfectly.

"close scrutiny" is, he claims, redundant. In fact he objects to any modification of scrutiny - close, careful, thoughtful. While I take the point that scrutiny is by definition close, I don't see redundancy as a bad feature of our language.

And tinman also gets number 10. The claim is that "zoom" can only be used for things going up and "swoop" should be used for going down.

----------------

Well done everybody.

The floor is now open for comment on the quality of this advice. As you may have guessed I disagree with all ten. Remember they were pulled entirely at random from the book, eliminating only the entries on spelling. I could take similar examples from every page.

Is still enjoy reading Bryson's books and have indeed started on his latest one now but I have to agree that taking his advice or believing his etymologies without other verification isn't a good idea. But that's not why I read them.

Anyway, once again trying to do so without reference to this particular author, thoughts on the pieces of advice in the original post above are now welcomed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

I have read Troublesome Words, and my impression was that it wasn't about writing clearly, it was about following rules for the sake of following rules. Which is fine, I guess, if that's your thing.

Too many people think they are experts in many fields when they're not. I have seen that in medicine/nursing. I know linguists see that. Bryson does a fine job with his travel books. From some of the posts here, I've concluded that he should have stuck to travel books. The problem with writing about a subject that you don't have expertise in is that others read the books and tend to believe what they read.

By the way, from my experience in writing book chapters and articles (I've not written an book), I'd think some of these errors should have been caught by the peer reviewers and editors.