''Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words'' () is a book by

Bill Bryson William McGuire Bryson ( ; born 8 December 1951) is an American-British journalist and author. Bryson has written a number of nonfiction books on topics including travel, the English language, and science. Born in the United States, he has be ...

, published under several titles since 1984, that catalogues some of the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

's most commonly misused words and phrases in order to demonstrate preferable

usage The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a languag ...

. It helps writers and editors to think about how to make written communication clearer.

Publication history

It was first published in 1984 with the title ''The

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

Dictionary of Troublesome Words'' () in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and with the title ''The

Facts on File Infobase is an American publishing company, publisher of databases, reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent ...

Dictionary of Troublesome Words'' () in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. It was republished in a revised edition in 1987; and again in the UK in 1997 under the title ''Troublesome Words'' (). In 2002 it was published as ''Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words''.

Content

Using almost forty standard works on the subject as his guide, Bryson aimed to produce a list of difficult English words that is generally readable and informative while also usable as a

reference work A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...

. Like all other major usage advice books, it reflects the language epistemology of professional editors, which is not completely coincident with that of linguistic scientists. It makes use of both

linguistic prescription Linguistic prescription is the establishment of rules defining publicly preferred Usage (language), usage of language, including rules of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard ...

and

linguistic description In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All aca ...

, attempting to avoid the pathological extremes of prescription (valueless

pedant Pedantry ( ) is an excessive concern with formalism, minor details, and rules that are not important. Etymology Pedantry is the adjective form of the 1580s English word pedant, which meant a male schoolteacher at the time. The word pedant orig ...

ry such as

hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...

) while also making use of its helpful side (which encourages

critical thinking Critical thinking is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, ...

). As the author states, "This book might more accurately, if less convincingly, have been called ''A Guide to Everything in English Usage That the Author Wasn't Entirely Clear About Until Quite Recently.''" Bryson describes the

as a valuable entity, with no two experts agreeing on any point of usage, claiming that those guides that do exist for the common user often expect the reader to be familiar with

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formu ...

terms not encountered since (or even at) high school.

References

Books by Bill Bryson Books about the English language English dictionaries {{dictionary-stub