Good English: the witty in-a-nutshell language guide

Saying what you mean

. . . and meaning what you say

Most of us, to the delight of our drooling grandparents, manage something quite like speech before we’re two years old. By the age of five we not only have a vocabulary of several hundred words (some of which the doting old couple aren’t quite so fond of), but display a surprising understanding of our complex, often illogical language. A great start – and yet vast numbers of adults are uneasily aware that they lack sufficient mastery of English either to express themselves well or to avoid making embarrassing mistakes.

Enter GOOD ENGLISH, which hacks away at the tangled thicket of confusions while never becoming a dull grammar lesson.

This, you’ll be relieved to know, is not a guide to good manners, encouraging you to be always on your best linguistic behaviour. If you remember being taught not to split your ‘infinitives’ or to begin sentences with ‘and’, it will raise your spirits to know that such rules are now widely regarded as artificial – and if you weren’t taught such things there’s no point in worrying your pretty/handsome/strangely memorable head about them now.

And (couldn’t resist it) this is certainly not a guide for purists, who will wish to qualify every statement with a thousand yes, buts. May, for example, buts be used in this way? (You bet!)

Although we don’t flinch from including a smattering of simple grammar, with a few terms which may at first seem a little off-putting, GOOD ENGLISH is essentially an aid to clear thinking and confident self-expression.

We look at the way the language is put together; take you through punctuation and the dreaded apostrophe; highlight the most common mistakes; and, as a parting shot, offer you an entertaining exercise designed to show you just how much you’ve learned.

Trust us: it’s far easier than you’ve been led to believe.

There’s no such thing as Good English

It was a pretty daring move to give the book this title, because there’s a hit squad out there eager to rough up anyone who dares to promote a standard form of English. Our crimes include elitism and neo-colonialism.

The variety of English dialects spoken throughout the world is certainly good for the vitality of the language, but the anything-goes mafiosi forget that each of these regional forms has its own, often uncodified, ‘rules and regulations’. Each, that is, has its accepted standard.

To encourage people to ignore the norms of their mother tongue is to betray those who most need a skilful use of language in order to feel socially