What is the difference between "immanent" and "imminent," or between "acute" and "chronic"? What is the singular form of "graffiti?" And what is the former name of "Moldova"? Here the author of the Aventis Prize winner A Short History of Nearly Everything answers these and many other questions in a useful and readable guide to language problems most commonly encountered by editors and writers. Delving into spelling, capitalization, plurals, hyphens, abbreviations, and foreign names and phrases, Bill Bryson illuminates the pitfalls in the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language—"those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can't quite remember."
"One of the best guides to usage there is. I cannot imagine an English-speaking person [who] would not rejoice in [it]."—Boston Globe
