The Grammar Book That Is a Life Hack

Can a book be whimsical and deadly serious at the same time? A grammar book, no less. In the history of my learning how to write, I have never gotten through the first few pages of a writing style book (Strunk and White, AP Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style from the University of Chicago). They are dry, dry, dry. 

But not Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, published in 2019. The author, Benjamin Dreyer, was the copy chief at Random House until his retirement in 2023. He has worked with scores of authors – some I’ve read, some I’ve read about, and others whose works I hope to read. Michael Chabon, E.L. Doctorow, Elizabeth Strout, Richard Russo, Michael Pollan, and Suzan-Lori Parks are some of those authors.

Also, from his examples of word usages, I can tell you that Benjamin Dreyer is Jewish, gay, smart, funny, kind, and disdains the boorishness and grammatical foul-ups of the first Trump regime, when this book was written. 

Here’s a photo of my book. I found it so delightful that I even read it while showering. Hence, the crinkly pages. (Yes, I take long showers.)

You might ask if this is the moment to be dwelling on grammar and usage, when the world feels like it’s spinning in reverse. When I doubt that I can count on my own government’s help about those things I’ve always taken for granted – when the next tornado hits, as measles become a raging epidemic, when the economy goes sour. 

Worse, I feel like my government is out to get me. As a naturalized citizen with a brown face, I worry about reentry into this country after going abroad. As an older woman, measures to defund Medicare and Social Security spark real fear. As a mother and grandmother, I’m scared for our children’s job security. I fear that our grandsons will get sent off to war. As a writer, I am terrified by this administration’s attacks on free speech.

The breakdown of civil society is a source of psychological turmoil. Anti-science, grift and lying are okay, and that’s just by government officials! 

Is this really the time to care about commas, hyphens, dashes, parentheses? And italics? But as Dreyer says – emphatically but adroitly – that is not the point of using correct grammar. The goal of writing is to express what you mean, how you feel, what you want, what responses you want to elicit from your readers. 

The trick is that to express yourself more clearly requires you to think more clearly. As a friend says, “Want to find out whether you really understand what you think you understand? Write about it!” Knowing some of these grammar and style rules gives you more options on how to make your point. And every little bit helps! 

Okay. Now, look! I have buried the lede. The lede is a sentence or two summarizing the most important ideas of a piece. This is the main concept I’m pushing: Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style helps me – and can help you – get your point across. 

You are not supposed to write a whole page before you get to the lede. But there’s room for people like me who like to let our thoughts wander in what I hope are interesting byways. Dreyer honors writers’ personal styles as well as correctness. He is generous that way. 

I came to the United States when I was eight years old. So, perhaps I am more aware of the frustrations of not being able to express myself. Some Chinese terms were untranslatable. Here’s an example. Nan guo is Chinese word that I still can’t put into English. Literally, nan guo means “difficult to get past.” You can use it to mean you are nauseated. It can also mean emotional angst or heartache. 

My first year here in the U.S., I was terrified when I had to go to the bathroom in school. “Poop,” or “number two,” or “bowel movement” or even “shit,” were not the first things you learn when you go to a new country. How do I tell the teacher?  

An area that continues to challenge me is English tenses. I jump from present to past to past perfect in a blink. Chinese has one word after the verb for all tenses in the past, and one word preceding the verb to denote future. That’s it.

Fortunately, I have my very own ever-vigilant editor, Laurie Vincent. She had already given me the same lesson on the differences between “jive,” “gibe” and “jibe,” that Dreyer notes in his book. I wrote about Laurie in my review of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.

It didn’t take long to learn to speak English. Reading took much longer. My first essay of the blogpost How I Became a Blogger recounts that tale of woe. But writing, oh my God, the writing! I’m still working on the writing.

For most of my young adulthood, I imagine my thoughts and feelings as a beachball-sized bundle of yarn. Writing required me to tease out each strand, unknotting snarls as I went, until I’ve gotten a straight thread to pull on. It’s hard and time-consuming. And you lose a lot of the flavor of the integrated sphere of ideas and emotions. It’s like translating something three-dimensional into two dimensions. 

How do you fit everything that’s connected into a linear structure? You edit. (I’d put an exclamation point on this, but Dreyer feels that one should probably limit them to three in a lifetime.)

But, if you want other people to have even an inkling of what’s going on inside of you, writing is the only way. Be it about politics and posting a subreddit, or a note to family about Thanksgiving schedules, or explaining how a piece of art fills your heart with light, or a letter of apology – you must take pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

And Benjamin Dreyer makes it easier to do all that. I am so grateful.

Tell me: How do you feel about writing?