BRYSON’S DICTIONARY for Writers and Editors
Bill Bryson – Random House – Hardcover NZ$45

From one of our most admired and bestselling authors, a wonderfully useful and readable guide to the problems of the English language most commonly encountered by editors and writers.What is the difference between “immanent” and “imminent”? What is the singular form of graffiti? What is the difference between “acute” and “chronic”? What is the former name of “Moldova”? What is the difference between a cardinal number and an ordinal number? One of the English language's most skilled writers answers these and many other questions and guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage.

Covering spelling, capitalization, plurals, hyphens, abbreviations, and foreign names and phrases, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors will be an indispensable companion for all who care enough about our language not to maul, misuse, or contort it.This dictionary is an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language.

As Bill Bryson notes, it will provide you with “the answers to all those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can’t quite remember.”
FOOTNOTE:
This title started life as The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words published by Allen Lane back in 1984 and have a copy of that earlier and much slimmer volume on the shelf besides this greatly expanded and significantly more useful new version.