BOOK REVIEW by Helen Moore
in the Newsletter of the Society of Editors (Victoria), September 2006

This is author Nick Renton's 60th book, in itself an impressive feat. The majority of his books are about finance, taxes and the like: areas in which it is apparent that Nick has encountered more than his fair share of egregious use of the English language. This book, while drawing on many examples from the commercial world, also shows Nick's broad interest in the English language and its curiosities.

Part I provides "Rules for writers in a nutshell" in Nick's self-admitted prescriptive style. It tackles all the usual suspects, among them common grammatical and spelling errors, vocabulary issues, gobbledegook, plain English and gender-neutral language.

This was not the section that piqued my interest the most, as guides of this sort are not uncommon. However, it's always good to see publications on the correct use of English language. The more books on correct grammar the better, as this can only help to raise the standard of writing.

Parts II and III were the sections I dipped into avidly, having happily read through the book's opening quotes (an unorthodox section, appearing before the contents). These are an eclectic selection, ranging from Sam Goldwyn ("Let's have some new cliches.") to a quote from a Manly ferry ("Toilet out of order. We regret the inconvenience."), and from T S Eliot ("All writers need editors, and exceptionally good writers need exceptionally good editors.") to Douglas Adams ("I love deadlines - they make the loveliest whooshing sound as they go by.").

Part II is entitled "For lovers of words". This section contains a chapter on the number of words in the English language (and the difficulties involved in trying to reach any sort of definitive conclusion), and a considerable number of lists, which again constitute a very diverse collection of concepts, including useful mnemonics, strange headlines, new Olympic events, anniversaries and how to confuse foreigners.

My favourite chapter in this section is "Established but illogical uses", mostly because it contains some of my own pet peeves, including "arguably", "decimate" and "quantum leap". I'm disappointed that "begs the question" has been omitted.

There is also an entertaining section on metaphors, which is a selection from the comprehensive book by the same author, Renton's metaphors: A dictionary of 4000 picturesque idiomatic expressions (Bas Publishing, 2005).

The chapter on curiosities of the English language is a useful compilation of things one reads on e-mail lists, or in various books, or hears somewhere, but that one can never quite recall where to find (without "googling").

For instance, Nick has provided some words that contain the vowels in the correct order, the sentence that contains the word "and" five times consecutively, the shortest pangram, the longest word, and the only 15-letter word that can be spelt without repeating a letter, just to name a few.

Part III, "Light relief", has some very entertaining and clever uses of English, contained in anecdotes, passages and stories. This is followed by a motley collection of appendixes - country codes on the Internet, selected currency symbols, world population figures, articles on the ABS, style manuals, and useful Internet links - followed by a glossary, and then a "Tailpiece". This addendum offers us jokes and plays on words, which are lots of fun.

I did find myself wondering what exactly the point of the book is: it is didactic in part, but mostly entertaining for the rest. Some of the inclusions - for example, world population figures, and country codes for the Internet, are mystifying - useful possibly, but a book on enjoying English isn't the first place I'd go to seek such information. And I found myself wishing that someone had an understanding of where to use en-dashes: hyphens stand where en-dashes are clearly required - this may be a trivial point, but it really irritated me.

The table of contents provides a comprehensive guide to the book, but the index is not at all useful. (I would tend to look for an entry on dates or date conventions rather than MMDDYY and variations thereof.) This is somewhat of an irony, as Nick quotes himself at the beginning of the book as saying "A book is only as good as its index".

However, as the subtitle suggests, this book is a treasure-house for word lovers. With some patience, the reader will find some gems contained within this 326-page book.