Guide to Grammar and Style — Comments
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by
Jack Lynch
I
do welcome comments on my Guide to Grammar and Style,
but please please
please read this before sending
questions my way.
The popularity of the guide is gratifying — it gets
thousands of hits every day — but that very popularity
makes it impossible for me to answer questions and settle office
arguments. I have a full-time job, and this ain't it. So I
regret that I can't give personal responses to most queries.
I'll occasionally break my rule when a question intrigues me, but
usually can manage nothing more than a canned response.
Besides, whatever I may think in my more self-satisfied moods,
I'm just not qualified to arbitrate the language for the rest of
the world.
Here's where to go for things not covered here:
- First, check the standard reference books! I'm amazed
at how many people ask questions that could be settled by a
thirty-second peek in a pocket dictionary. I recommend a few good
dictionaries
in my guide. There are also guides to typing practices in many
secretarial handbooks.
- Check out the Additional
Reading section of my guide, or browse the links to other writing sites.
- For less cut-and-dry questions, you'll get a wide range of
responses — some of them even well-informed — from the
newsgroup alt.usage.english.
If, however, anything in the guide is unclear, inaccurate,
misleading, or simply missing, please drop me a line at
jlynch@andromeda.rutgers.edu.