Resources

To light your way to expressiveness, here are some one hundred resources selected from the galactic mass. Twice updated since my original gathering, they are nevertheless weighted toward classics and works of otherwise enduring value. I’ve tried to identify the latest editions as of late 2011; their titles will serve as keys to subsequent ones or to Internet/mobile versions. Be aware that such digital versions may differ from print counterparts, for better or worse. Reference librarians can help track out-of-print and other elusive items.

ENGLISH AND LANGUAGE IN GENERAL

The American Language. 4th ed. (1936) and the two supplements (1945, 1948), abridged. H. L. Mencken, with annotation and new material by Raven I. McDavid Jr., assisted by David W. Maurer. New York: Knopf, 1967. Mencken’s groundbreaking, masterly study of American English and the intertwining of language and culture.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 3rd ed. David Crystal. New York: Cambridge, 2010. A sprawling, illustrated treasury covering some sixty-five themes of language study. Animated by the amiable style of this British linguist.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 2nd ed. David Crystal. New York: Cambridge, 2003. Another Crystal treasure (see previous item), this one in four-color. An amazement to read and behold, with examples drawn equally from British and American English. Vast, brilliant, accessible.

The Language Instinct. 3rd ed. Steven Pinker. New York: Harper, 2007. A stimulating discourse by a cognitive neuroscientist with a bright style. Evolution has hard-wired the language instincts into our brains, says Pinker, as he explores the ramifications.

The Miracle of Language. Rev. ed. Richard Lederer. New York: Pocket Books, 1999. The popular “verbivore” (devourer of words) ambles among the efficiencies, etymologies, and idiosyncrasies of English.

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. Reissue. Bill Bryson. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. “History, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of English” by the informed and funny Bryson.

A Mouthful of Air: Languages, Languages…Especially English. Anthony Burgess. New York: William Morrow, 1993. A scholar’s eye and novelist’s ear for the history and dynamics of language. Chapters include the salty “Low-Life Language.”

The Stories of English. David Crystal. New York: Overlook, 2004. From the engaging linguist, a sweeping look at English in past and present contexts so varied they mock any notion of a “correct” version.

You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity. Robert Lane Greene. New York: Delacorte, 2010. With engaging wit, linguist/journalist Greene underscores the abiding power of language in all its diverse faces and locales.

STYLE, USAGE, AND GRAMMAR

The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. A–Z listing offers usage examples, context, and American Heritage’s mighty resources—including its expert panel—for some 1,500 terms.

American Usage and Style: The Consensus. Roy H. Copperud. New York: Von Nostrand Reinhold, 1982. A time-saving, sharp-minded, A–Z synthesis of what several dictionaries and major guides—including Flesch, Follet, and Fowler—decree on usages. Still useful in the twenty-first century.

The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010. Practically a U.S. national standard for mechanical style (citation, bibliography, footnotes, punctuation, numbers, format, etc.) for editors and scholars to general audience. Grammar/ usage section; attention to digital-age style.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss. New York: Gotham Books, 2004. Never has zero tolerance been so much fun—or more tolerant of hilarious digressions into the ways of punctuation marks. Intelligent, practical (if curmudgeonly) advice delivered in British English. A model of animated (and best-selling) expository prose.

Garner’s Modern American Usage. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford USA, 2009. As thorough, expert, and entertaining as it gets in a modern usage guide, with a heroic number of entries, contemporary examples, and sage judgments. Becoming a standard.

Grammar for Grownups. Val Dumond. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Friendly, informed approach overrides one’s negative attitudes toward grammar.

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tricks for Better Writing. Mignon Fogarty. New York: Holt, 2008. Fogarty’s popular advice via Internet and podcast is encapsulated here. Fun and helpful, if a bit helter-skelter.

The Longman Practical Stylist: A Classic Guide to Style. Sheridan Baker. New York: Longman, 2005. One of several incarnations of Baker’s brilliant, college-level guide to writing stylish prose—a more thorough and enlightening twentieth-century product than The Elements of Style.

Modern American Usage: A Guide. Rev. ed. Wilson Follett. New York: Hill & Wang, 1998. Follett’s classic 1966 guide, treasured for its pleasurable if opinionated discourses on usage problems, here updated by Eric Wensberg to reflect changes in American idiom.

The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. 3rd ed. H. W. Fowler. R. W. Burchfield, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Grammar, syntax, style, word choice—with Fowler’s famously imperious commentaries updated by the former editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, second Supplement. For curmudgeonly wit, the 2nd edition is your man. For modern balance and sensitivity, this Burchfield edition rules.

Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today’s American English Usage. Mark Davidson. New York: Norton, 2005. A twenty-first-century take on usage issues, in A–Z order. Wealth of examples include many from popular culture. Engaging sidelights on certain usages (ground zero, girl talk).

Talking About People: A Guide to Fair and Accurate Language. Rosalie Maggio. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1997. The classic guides to bias-free language—including one by Maggio—appeared in the years around 1990. This updated, enduring work contains style guidelines and a dictionary of some 8,000 terms in “problematic” areas. Today’s editors expect graceful solutions to biased or hurtful language; Maggio provides them better than anyone.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. 3rd ed., 2009. Patricia T. O’Conner. A best-selling, popular guide to grammar and its modern applications; lessons administered with larky wit. The 3rd edition adds material on spelling and punctuation.

DESK AND LIBRARY DICTIONARIES

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed. Boston: Harcourt, 2011. Expert lexicography in an appealing format, with an abundance of usage notes from AHD’s panel of 200 language mavens. For each entry, definitions are in order of most current or central use. Optional apps put dictionary on your smartphone.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2008. Spawn of the tolerant, unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, the college edition has its defs and phats along with some 165,000 other entries and richness of quotes and recent uses. Definitions in order of historical use. Comes with CD and one-year subscription to online version and other online reference works.

The New Oxford American Dictionary. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford USA, 2010. A quality heavyweight, updated enough to include tweet. Strong on core (most common) meanings, American nuance, and special features on usage.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Oxford, 1989. The ultimate English word source, supplemented by the occasional Oxford English Dictionary Series, CD products, subscription online version, and concise spin-offs. Defines some half-million words used from Chaucer’s time to the present. “Diachronic” (details historic use of words) and descriptive (nonjudgmental), it contains some 2.5 million illustrative quotations.

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. 2nd ed., rev. New York: Random House, 2005. An attractive major work influenced by lexicographer Stuart Berg Flexner. 2005 edition adds front section of (then) new-word contenders for acceptance. Definitions in order of most common meanings.

DESK THESAURI

Roget’s International Thesaurus. 5th ed., indexed. Robert L. Chapman, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. 7th ed., Barbara Ann Kipfer, ed. HarperCollins, 2011. The HarperCollins versions are heir to the original Roget’s (see Chapter 12). Chapman overhauled the old Victorian categories, building a postmodern framework (1,073 categories) for 325,000 related terms. The many special lists include “Gods and Goddesses,” and “Manias and Phobias.” The seventh edition, edited by the slang-savvy Dr. Kipfer, comes with further updating, more lists, and hundreds of quotations.

Bartlett’s Roget’s Thesaurus. 1st ed. Roger Donald, ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996. Organized by concept, like Roget’s, this Americanized thesaurus contains some 325,000 references in 848 main categories. Includes almanac-like lists. Quotations from Bartlett’s vast archive illustrate selected words. The massive index is all-inclusive, covering all the entries, synonyms, lists, and quotes.

Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus in Dictionary Form. 3rd ed., expanded and updated. Princeton Language Institute, Barbara Ann Kipfer, ed. New York: Dell, 2005. A good choice among relatively portable, A–Z thesauri. Its 976 (paperback) pages include a conceptual index to main-entry terms.

AIDS TO PROSE EXPRESSION

The Describer’s Dictionary. David Grambs. New York: Norton, 1995. What’s the word for having a long nose? Leptorrhine. Like other reverse dictionaries, this one leads from loose to precise (describing) terms, but choice examples from literature add browsing pleasure. No index, unfortunately.

Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary. 4th ed. Marc McCutcheon. New York: Facts on File, 2010. You know the category but the word escapes you? Find it in this thematic arrangement, along with good related terms (not synonyms).

Edit Yourself. Bruce Ross Larson. New York: Norton, 1982. (New material added in 1996.) With an easy look-up system, gets right to the common revisions that editors still make, giving writers a chance to make them first and learn the craft. Also recommended: Larson’s “The Effective Writing Series” (Norton), strong on model sentences and paragraphs.

The Elements of Style. 4th ed. William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. New York: Longman, 2000. An added index and a new introduction by Roger Angell notwithstanding, the “little book” that saved America from choking on its jargon and obfuscations is creaky and slight as a manual of usage and style today. But for quick jabs at muddled expression, it still rules in the 4.5-oz. division. A charmingly illustrated edition (Penguin) appeared in 2005.

The New Oxford Guide to Writing. Thomas S. Kane. New York: Oxford USA, 1988. Berkley paperback edition, 2000: The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing. Like a course from an engaging university writing teacher, which Kane was. Covers creative and mechanical style, with examples by the ton.

On Great Writing (On the Sublime). Longinus. Trans. by G. M. A. Grube. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1957. (Reprint: Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett. 1991) The classical critic’s “five causes of great writing” endure today, as does the charm of this surviving fragment. (See Chapter 8.)

On Writing Well. 30th-anniversary edition. William Zinsser. New York: Collins, 2006. Zinsser’s seemingly effortless style as well as deft advice on writing (mainly nonfiction) has made this book “a Bible for a generation of writers” (—New York Times) since the first edition in 1980.

Sin & Syntax: How to Craft Wildly Effective Prose. Constance Hale. New York: Three River Press (paper), 2001. An inventive breakdown of conventional rules, with fresh, lively advice on when to sin against them for effect. Respected writing educator and former Wired editor, Hale nails the spirit of modern prose.

The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing. Ben Yagoda. New York: Harper, 2005. With input from forty writers, Yagoda explores the delicate balances and forces affecting style.

Spunk and Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style. Arthur Plotnik. New York: Random House Reference, paperback 2007. A jaunt through the elements of competitive expression: writing that soars above the ordinary to engage editors and readers. Topics such as surprise, inventiveness, edge, and even feng-shui principles are peppered with bright examples from contemporary authors.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. Roy Peter Clark. New York: Little Brown, 2008. Using the toolbox metaphor, revered writing teacher Clark (Poynter Institute) unlocks the wrenches and hammers of the craft in this best-selling guide. Abundant examples.

PROSE STYLISTS

Note: We learn from models. In my chapters I cite a number of exemplary stylists, but of course there are multitudes—more each year. Here is what I might assign as a minicourse in varied but successful styles.

Accordion Crimes. E. Annie Proulx. New York: Scribner, 1996. (Novel.) As good as it gets in weaving detailed particulars into character and plot.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Phillip Lopate, ed. New York: Anchor, 1997. A cornucopia of international excellence from Seneca to Richard Rodriquez. Seventy-five essays introduced by Lopate’s essay on the form.

The Bible. Any standard Bible models the art of elevated narrative. The style of the King James Authorized Version of 1611—the Jacobean English of its forty-seven scholars—is the one, as Anthony Burgess said, “branded into the brain” for its Oriental flavor, literary grandeur, succinctness, and force.

Beloved. Toni Morrison. New York: Knopf: 1987. (Novel.) See how a modern classicist handles anguish: that of a former slave haunted by the daughter she had to kill to “save,” and of the ghost-child herself. Pitch perfect.

A Book of Condolences. Rachel Harding and Mary Dyson, editors. New York: Continuum, 1991, 1999. Ageless. Letters from Coleridge, Lincoln, Shaw, and the like model the most difficult of all prose endeavors: words to comfort the bereaved.

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Junot Díaz. New York: Riverhead, 2007. Virtuoso mix of high and profane diction, urban Latino (Dominican) flavor, in this impassioned novel.

Caramelo. Sandra Cisneros. New York: Knopf, 2002. (Novel.) Beguiling, masterly prose style that feels like song accompanied by mariachi guitars.

The Corrections. Jonathan Franzen. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. (Novel.) In a family story that dazzled critics (and Oprah), word choice, sentences, and particulars will dazzle observers of style.

Fever: Twelve Stories. John Edgar Wideman. New York: Henry Holt, 1989. A show of range, from street funk to soaring levels of consciousness.

The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien. Oscar Hijuelos. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1993. (Novel.) How to handle a slew of characters without losing the exuberance of language that ignites every detail.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Dave Eggers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. (Novel.) In this breathless story of spiritual rehab, Eggers takes more stylistic risks than any writer should dare—and pulls them off. Among them: a self-contradictory notes section printed upside down.

A House for Mr. Biswas. V. S. Naipaul. New York: Knopf, 1983. Exemplary if only for the music of its dialect. The novel (of a Trinidadian’s struggle for simple dignity) is “the one closest to me,” said its versatile author.

London Fields. Martin Amis. New York: Crown, 1990. (Novel.) The brilliant Amis will reach into any bag of expression for freshness and force. Street corners “swagbellied with rain” is a typical locution in this eerie tale.

Olive Kitteridge. Elizabeth Strout. New York: Random House, 2008. (Novel in linked stories). Suppressed feelings treated in slow-burning style that gathers seismic power.

Supersad True Love Story. Gary Shteyngart. New York: Random House, 2010. (Novel.) Tale of dystopian near future, darkly comic but told with heart, in form of diary entries and text messages.

The Volcano Lover. Susan Sontag. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1992. (Novel.) Controlled tone, along with shifts of tense and voice, creates a real-time immediacy that intensifies this historical love story.

Wonder Boys. Michael Chabon. New York: Villard, 1995. Stylistic zingers are everywhere in Chabon’s novels. “Undressing her was an act of recklessness, a kind of vandalism, like releasing a zoo full of animals, or blowing up a dam.”

 

Among other prose authors to be read with attention to style, I suggest Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, John Banville, José Saramago, Will Self, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Mario Vargas Llosa, Diane Ackerman, and Bill Bryson.

QUOTATIONS, GENERAL

(See also discussion in Chapter 11)

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. Robert Andrews. New York: Columbia, 1993. With an emphasis on “liveliness,” 11,000 new quotes were added to an original 7,000 for this edition, making it one of the big ones if not the latest. (Arranged by speaker and topic; no keyword index.)

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. 17th ed., rev. and enlarged. John Bartlett. Justin Kaplan, ed. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. Published since 1855; valued for thoughtful selection, historical sources—and, with this edition, for contemporaneity, too, with poet Billy Collins and the Seinfeld show among the quoted.

Modern Quotations, 2000–2010. Ross Bonander. Amazon Kindle e-book. Delabarre Publishing, 2011. If you can Kindle, you’ll find some 800 recent quotes from laureates to rappers. A good complement to searching the web.

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 7th ed. Elizabeth Knowles, ed. New York: Oxford USA, 2009. Some 20,000 quotes, 2,000 new since 1996; strong on classical, but with such jolly categories as slogans (“Burn your bra!”—mid-’70s), movie lines, last words, and famous misquotes. Finely indexed.

QUOTATIONS, SPECIALIZED

A Dictionary of Literary Quotations. Meic Stephens, compiler. New York: Routledge, 1990. “When I split an infinitive, god damn it, I split it so it stays split.”—Raymond Chandler. Hard to find, but offers some 3,250 choice quotes about literature, writing, and related anguish.

The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women. Rosalie Maggio, ed. Boston: Beacon, 1998. Its 16,000 entries, most not found elsewhere, include Mary Heaton Vorre’s definition of writing: “[T]he art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations. 3rd ed. (Paper). Fred Metcalf. New York: Penguin, 2010. A source of one-liners (and more) from P. G. Wodehouse to Miss Piggy.

My Soul Looks Back, ’Less I Forget: A Collection of Quotations of People of Color. Dorothy Winbush Riley, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Some 7,000 quotations. Though newer collections are more diverse, Riley introduced many names overlooked in standard collections. One of them, Mary Poole, said in 1987: “He who laughs, lasts”—as should this pioneering compilation.

SPECIAL LEXICONS AND WORD COLLECTIONS

Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. Robert K. Barnhart, ed., Sol Steinmetz, collaborator. New York: Chambers, 1999. Authoritative, well written; explains the origins and development of some 25,000 English words.

Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives. Arthur Plotnik. Berkeley, Calif.: Viva Editions, 2011. Offers some 6,000 alternatives to worn-out terms such as awesome and amazing. Fifteen categories of acclaim, with commentary on using terms in each; special appendices include texting superlatives.

Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. Rev. and updated. Geneva Smitherman. New York: Mariner, 2000. Relatively enduring terms and their significance in the black culture; many vivid usages and an edifying introduction by the compiler.

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 18th ed. Camilla Rockwood, ed. New York: Collins, 2010. A beloved standard. Meanings and origins of some 20,000 intriguing terms and phrases from Aaron’s beard to Zen, with updates such as full monty and Harry Potter references, plus charming discourse and quotes.

The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor, eds. New York: Routledge, 2008. More than 60,000 terms of modern slang from around the English-speaking world, with brief definitions. Slang of Valley Girls, druggies, rappers—it’s all here in this monumental gathering standing on the shoulders of Eric Partridge.

Concise Science Dictionary. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford USA, 1996, paper. Pelagic. Isostasy. A handy starting place for humanists eager to loot the riches of science terminology, updating the hoard with The American Heritage Science Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin, 2011.

Dickson’s Word Treasury: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Old & New, Weird & Wonderful, Useful & Outlandish Words. Rev. ed. Paul Dickson. New York: Wiley, 1992. Any collection by the word-mad Dickson will delight even dunderwhelps (see under “Loutish Words”).

Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms, 1941–1991. John Algeo, ed. New York: Cambridge, 1991. (See Chapter 12.) A masterly introduction to forming new words, plus commentary on roughly 4,000 interesting terms, blitz (1940) to boy toy (1990). More recent compilations include The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (Grant Barrett. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), featuring some 750 new terms with citations. (See also “Digital Sources.”)

The Firefly Visual Dictionary. Arianne Archambault, Jean-Claude Corbeil, et al. Buffalo, New York: Firefly, 2002. A Cadillac of visual dictionaries, which picture and label thousands of the world’s things and their components. E.g.: What’s that high platform from which murderous things can be dropped on a stage? The fly gallery. (Good writers give the precise—and often lyrical—names of their particulars.)

The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World. Adam Jacot de Boinod. New York: Penguin, 2006. Foreign terms add vivezza to English expression. In selective collections like this one, good possibilities present themselves quickly. To browse a massive selection, turn to The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases (New York: Oxford USA, 2nd ed. 2010, paper), with some 6,000 words in forty languages.

Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words. Susan Kelz Sperling. Old Saybrook, Conn.: Konecky, 1977, 2005. Snirtle and keak over the woodness of words, either in hudder-mudder or with boonfellows. Words worth reviving are offered here, plus a section on body parts in phrases.

Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Vol. 1, A–G; Vol. 2, H–O. J. E. Lighter, ed. New York: Random house, 1994, 1997. Even two-thirds completed, the set constitutes the largest and finest such collection, with some 30,000 entries and more than 100,000 usage examples—providing an enormous stock of salty quotes. Scholarly, but funky (“down to earth,” ca. 1954) and entertaining in content. (See Chapter 9.)

Random House Word Menu. Rev. ed. Stephen Glazier. New York: Random House, 1996. Some 65,000 terms ingeniously grouped with related terms. In effect, a thesaurus with brief definitions, excellent for tracking forgotten or undiscovered names of things. Compiled with a passion for the language’s bounty.

Word Spy: The Word Lover’s Guide to Modern Culture. Paul McFedries. New York: Broadway, 2004. This wonderment of new-word watching is a way station en route to the up-to-the-minute wordspy.com.

ORAL AND NONVERBAL EXPRESSION

The Audience, the Message, the Speaker. 8th ed. John Hasling. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. A core approach to public speaking, looking at ethics, diversity, and recent technology including PowerPoint and the Internet.

Delivering Dynamic Presentations: Using Your Voice and Body for Impact. Ralph E, Hillman. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. You’ve written a killer talk; now, aided by an esteemed professor’s advice, work on the talking.

The Elements of Speechwriting and Public Speaking. Jeff Scott Cook. New York: Macmillan, 1990. (Longman, 1996, paper.) Agile speechwriter Cook presents the fundamentals of writing and giving talks. An intelligent primer with many tips and good examples.

Make Your Point. Kevin Carroll, Bob Elliot. Second Avenue Press, 2009. A quick-study, 124-page upbeat primer for oral communication of any type.

Smart Speaking: 60-Second Strategies for More than 100 speaking Problems and Fears. Laurie Schloff and Marcia Yudkin. New York: Holt, 1991 (Podium, 2011). An enduring, compassionate, problem-by-problem approach to confidence and control. E.g., “I’m not funny, eloquent, or interesting—is there any hope for me?”

Speaking with a Purpose. 8th ed. Arthur Koch. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2009. Practical and concise. Pricey, yet popular with students. Treats such matters as addressing culturally diverse audiences.

What to Say When You’re Dying on the Platform. Lily Water. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1995. Crowd-pleasing cover-ups for 130 nightmarish speaker’s situations, plus tips on avoiding the disasters.

PERIODICALS

American Speech. Quarterly. Durham, N.C. (Duke University). For scholars or other serious observers of English in the Western Hemisphere. Articles, reviews, brief essays, and notes. (http://ameri-canspeech.dukejournals.org)

Creative Nonfiction. Semiannual. Pittsburgh, Pa. A focal point for the genre, publishing works of and about creative nonfiction. (www.creativenonfiction.org)

Poets & Writers Magazine. Bimonthly. New York. Articles and author interviews include discourse on writing technique, particularly for poetry. Lists writing competitions and conferences. (www.pw.org)

Verbatim: The Language Quarterly. Chicago. “Language and linguistics for the layperson.” Venerable, yet unpredictable and entertaining. A center of expert and often playful language commentary, debate, and collection. (www.verbatimmag.com)

The Vocabula Review. Monthly (online subscription). Rockport, Mass. Some 35 pages of articles, columns, and other features on language, but with an editorial attitude: TVR “battles nonstandard, careless English and embraces clear, expressive English.” (www.vocabula.com)

The Writer. Monthly. Waukesha, Wisc. One of the oldest writers’ monthlies, revamped by its new publisher. Fresh, attractive, and practical. Especially good for aspiring fiction writers. Market listings for your expressive efforts. (www.writermag.com).

Writers Digest. Monthly. Cincinnati, Ohio. The flagship magazine of the Writers Digest writing-advice enterprise, with varied tips, techniques, and markets for developing writers. (www.writersdigest.com)

DIGITAL RESOURCES

Note: Most libraries provide free access to various premium databases (i.e., those not on the web, or not free there). Many of these powerful databases abound in such writerly resources as massive, up-to-date language-reference works; e.g., The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Ask your librarian.

As for specific websites related to expressiveness: As quickly as they appear and disappear, I might better suggest a fishing strategy than hang out today’s catch. Thus I’ve indicated some major types to be found via search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. For each type, try searching with the terms I’ve suggested (use the whole group, as punctuated: quotation marks enclose exact wording; a space+hyphen means “NOT” for what follows it); you’ll get a nimiety of sites to browse, including (at this writing, anyway) the worthy examples I’ve selected.

 

Lists of resources. (Suggested search: resources for writers)

Example: Internet-Resources.com. Writing Links & Links for Writers. A galaxy of choices, by category. http://www.internet-resources.com/writers/

 

Language and grammar. (Suggested search: online guides English language grammar style usage)

Example: Guide to Grammar and Writing. Genial site with drop-down menus, including “Word and sentence level” and “Paragraph level.” Easy navigation to broader advice, and the advice is charming and generous. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

 

Vocabulary feeds. (Suggested search: word day definition vocabulary subscription )

Example: Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. Free, daily email delivery of a good word, with etymology, usage, and notes, plus archive. www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day

 

Reference works. (Suggested search: reference works language free online learning)

Example: Bartleby.com: Great Reference Works Online. A generous offering of searchable, public-domain dictionaries, thesauri, quotation and language references, etc.—not the fullest or latest texts, but very often up to the task at hand. www.bartleby.com/reference

 

Specialized lexicons. (Suggested search: glossary of, dictionary of -amazon)

Example: Weather Glossary. Such specialized lexicons not only offer terms for precise description, but often suggest lyrical, metaphorical possibilities. For example, “gully washer” (sudden heavy shower) and “foehn” (downward warming mountain wind) on this site. www.weather.com/glossary

 

Collaborative dictionaries. (Suggested search: people’s dictionaries free-content contributed definitions).

Example: Urban Dictionary. Contributors provide an up-to-the minute lexicon of neologisms and slang, and users add to and vote on meanings. Non-authoritative and often X-rated, but useful for keeping up with the street. www.urbandictionary.com

 

Blogs. (Suggested search: blog writing tips words language)

Example: Daily Writing Tips. Top-rated site with relatively dependable posts and regular RSS feeds on mechanics, craft, vocabulary, and types of writing. www.dailywritingtips.com

 

For fun. (Suggested search: word play fun collections slang)

Example: Fun With Words: The Wordplay Website. “Amusing quirks, peculiarities, and oddities of the English language.” This site and scores like it prove that mindless thoughts, too, can be put into words—from anagrams to spoonerisms—and that it’s a lot larder than it hooks. www.fun-with-words.com