Read based on the review of KimMie”!
I’d say this book is a good corollary to Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, especially if you are someone not-from-Wee-Britain who is now living in Wee-Britain and writing things on a regular basis (e.g., for work).
It’s sort of broken into two halves. The first is a very enjoyable meditation on the nature of writing, copy editing, and overall style. Dreyer has a droll voice, likely honed from years of sifting through talented but messing manuscripts and wrangling them into something publish-able. I found myself agreeing with many of his strictures and was happy to find that there was no “but I am a Grammarian” type put down of the use of nonbinary pronouns (wow what a low bar). The Oxford comma, as a matter of fact, should be used in all settings. That is is not standard practice at my bougie bank (American in origin as it is) makes me twitch, constantly.
In short, though (ha), Dreyer argues for the use of clear, easily understood English that conveys a point to a reader with minimal mental gymnastics. And that is a goal I think we can all get behind. In a recent Slate article about Colleen Hoover, who is apparently a Big Deal, the following quote was quoted:
C.S. Lewis once wrote, cliché makes reading effortless because:
… it is immediately recognizable. ‘My blood ran cold’ is a hieroglyph of fear. Any attempt, such as a great writer might make, to render this fear concrete in its full particularity, is doubly a chokepear to the unliterary reader. For it offers him what he doesn’t want, and offers it only on the condition of his giving to the words a kind and degree of attention which he does not intend to give. It is like trying to sell him something he has no use for at a price he does not wish to pay.
I do not disagree! There is nothing inherently virtuous about convoluted metaphors that make you stand on your head to understand the plot!
The second part of this book I will admit to heavily skimming–long lists of pet peeves, which I suppose you must assume is an occupational hazard when you give a copy editor a book advance. Like giving a mouse a cookie.