It burns, it burns….

Geoffrey Pullum writes a review

The book is called Strictly English: The Correct Way to Write… and Why It Matters. It was published in September by Random House…. If you can feel your teeth start to itch as you read his title, don’t buy the book. Look at it in the front of the bookstore and then put it back on the table. It really is that pompous, and for true bone-headed blundering stupidity about grammar it actually gives The Elements of Style a run for its money.

I know that a few tender souls will feel that there must be something good in everything, and that I really shouldn’t be so negative. So I will say one favorable thing about the book. Holding it in my hands did not make my skin erupt in a horrible disfiguring disease. There. I’m done. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to be fair and balanced.

via Language Log » Strictly incompetent: pompous garbage from Simon Heffer.

By the way the excellent and eminently sane Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage is available in toto, gratis at Google Books.