Correctness
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000; Bartleby, 2000).
The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005)
Robert Allen, ed. Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (Oxford UP, 1999)
The American Heritage® Book of English Usage (Houghton Mifflin, 1996; Bartleby 2000)
H.W. Fowler, The King's English. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1908; Bartleby, 1999).
Bryan A. Garner , The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style (Oxford UP 2000)
E. Ward Gilman, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1989; 1994)
Pam Peters, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (New York: Cambridge U P, 2004)
Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (Columbia UP 1993; Bartleby 2001)
Jan Freeman, The Word (recent columns), Boston Globe (weekly column on usage; see Lexis-Nexis in
Why is it that brackish, plainly a slippery character, attracts no attention from the word police, while the much less dangerous decimate is pursued by blaring sirens? I'm afraid that the answer is that our usage worries rarely reflect actual problems with the language. Most of them are trinkets taken at random from a grab bag of hand-me-down prejudices and whims.
and "Round Trip" (on "loan" vs. "lend") 07/29/07, "A Fun Whodunit" 03/30/08
See esp. "Rule by whim: Sometimes usage edicts are just . . . arbitrary" 12/21/2008 and "The language dustbin: Some advice doesn't age well" 12/28/2008
and "Countdown: One Less Thing to Worry About" on exception to less/fewer description 24 May 2009: C 3
"Thou Shalt Not Worry About It: Stern Commandments of Language Use Crumble"--7 Jun. 2009: K 2
William Safire, On Language, New York Times (weekly column on usage; search Lexis-Nexis or The New York Times
Barbara Wallraff, Word Court, Atlantic. Search Academic Search Premier database.
Dennis E. Baron, “Watching our grammar.” In Grammar and Good Taste: Reforming the American Language. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982. 226-241
Laurie Bauer, “You shouldn’t say ‘it is me’ because ‘me’ is accusative.” In Language Myths. Ed. Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. London: Penguin, 1998. 132-39
Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts, ed. Standard English: The Widening Debate. London: Routledge, 1999.
Dwight Bolinger, “School for shamans.” In Language the Loaded Weapon: The Use and Abuse of Language Today (London and New York: Longman, 1980. 164-181)
June Casagrande, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite (New York: Penguin Books, 2006) (humorous language columns)
Jenny Cheshire, “Double negatives are illogical.” In Language Myths. Ed. Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. London: Penguin, 1998. 113-22.
David Crystal, The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left (Oxford; New York: Oxford U P, 2006) PE1075 .C79 2006
-----. “Prescriptive grammar.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995. 194-95) PE1072 .C68 1995
Karl W. Dykema, "Where Our Grammar Came From", College English 22 (1961): 455-65.
Edward Finegan, “English grammar and usage.” In The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. IV 1776-1997. Ed. Suzanne Romaine. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1998. 536-88.
E. Ward Gilman, "A Brief History of English Usage". Merriam Webster's Dictionary Of English Usage. Ed. E. Ward Gilman. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1989: 7a-11a (for page 11a, which
Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary (1755)
Tom McArthur, Usage. Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford: Oxford U P, 1998) See also related articles, for example, "Usage guidance and critcism."
James Milroy and Lesley Milroy. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1999, esp. “Prescription and standardisation” 1-23.
Corpus Linguistics
Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE)--freely available online
Oxford English Corpus--background information and demo available online
McKean, Erin. On Language: "Corpus." The New York Times Magazine 29 Jul. 2007: 14.
Traditional Grammar--Logic vs. Usage
Deborah Cameron, Verbal Hygiene: The Politics of Language, London: Routledge, 1995.
Robert Einarsson, "The Philosophical Roots of Traditional English Grammar." Fifth Annual Conference of the NCTE Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar , Illinois State University, Normal, IL.
Edward Finegan, "What IS 'Correct' Language." Do You Speak American?. 2005. PBS. 12 May 2006
Mark Halpern, "A War That Never Ends." Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1997: 19-20, 22. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Suffolk U., Sawyer Lib. 27 Apr. 2008
-----, "The End of Linguistics." American Scholar 70.1 (Winter 2001): 13-26. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Suffolk U., Sawyer Lib. 26 Apr. 2008
Scott E. Kapel, "Mistakes, Fallacies, and Irresponsibilities of Prescriptive Grammar." The Outlandish English Language Website. 1997. 12 May 2006
Herbert Charles Morton, "The Quagmire of AIN'T." In The Story of Webster's Third: Philip Gove's Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics (New York: Cambridge U P, 1994: 157-65)
Geoffrey Nunberg, "The Decline of Grammar." Atlantic Monthly (December 1983): 31-46. Do You Speak American?. 2005. PBS. 12 May 2006 <http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/decline/>.
-----. “Usage in The American Heritage Dictionary,” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. xxxvi-xxix [36 pars.].
-----. “What the usage panel thinks.” In The State of the Language. Ed. Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1980. 467-482 PE1087 .S69
Pam Peters and Wendy Young, "English Grammar and the Lexicography of Usage", Journal of English Linguistics 25 (1997): 315-31.
David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present." Harper's April, 2001: 39-58. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Suffolk U., Sawyer Lib. 26 Apr. 2008
Simon Winchester, "Word Imperfect." The Atlantic Monthly 287.5 (May 2001): 54-86. Academic Search Complete. EBSCOhost. Suffolk U., Sawyer Lib. 26 Apr. 2008
From Prof. Arnold M. Zwicky, Stanford U
A web rogues’ gallery
BaalObsidian “How grammatically correct are you?” 3/24/04: http://quizilla.com/users/BaalObsidian/quizzes/How%20grammatically%20correct%20are%20y ou%3F%20(Revised%20with%20answer%20key)
MSN Encarta 2005 “Are you grammatically incorrect?”: http://encarta.msn.com/quiz_51/Are_You_Grammatically_Incorrect.html
Jesse Kornbluth 3/21/05 on “Ten usage and grammar errors that could (or should) cripple a career”: http://mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a4028.asp?pntvs=1& followups 3/28/05: http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a4085.asp?pntvs=1&