The Penguin Dictionary of American Usage and Style: A Readable Reference Book, Illuminating Thousands of Traps That Snare Writers and Speakers

Every book on English usage should be read skeptically to some degree or other, but this one more than most. My main complaint is that Lovinger tries too hard to find errors, to the point that he finds them where they aren't. A lot. There are examples on nearly every page. Which I will illustrate by opening the book at random, and giving at least one example from whichever page I open to. OK, page 280. First part is a lament about the use of "output" in nontechnical contexts. It's a fair point about style, if it's taken merely as a warning about potentially awkward or off-putting usage. His example of a student who was said to be handicapped in "his ability to output the information" seems a good example of a poor use of the word, though I can see why it was tempting to use it. The writer was probably thinking of the student as receiving an "input" of information and retaining it but just not being able to spit it back out right (so to speak). It's hard to think of another word that expresses that idea of returning information and doesn't also sound a bit off. "Regurgitate" would fit, but .... Lovinger suggests "express," which might have been better but doesn't suggest as well the idea of returning what was taken in. Still, "output" retains enough of its technical baggage to make it sound like the student is being seen rather mechanically. So I don't object to Lovinger on that point. Then he has a section on the word "outrageous." This offers a good example of a mistake that characterizes his general approach throughout the book. He just understands the word too narrowly, as having only negative connotations. He objects to describing the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition as "outrageously spectacular." Yet the first definition of "outrageous" in the current Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is the neutral "exceeding the limits of what is usual." In this case, the word's associations with indecency and offensiveness may be intended to color the description of what may have been perceived as exceeding the bounds of proper taste and use of human resources. In any case, it's not obvious that the word was used improperly or with any less than full precision. A similar point applies to his other example, about an ad for "outrageous deals." On the same page he completely derails by confusing etymology with current meaning. Yes, "oval" comes from the Latin for "egg," but he's just nuts to suppose it's objectionable to use "oval" for "elliptical" on the argument that an ellipse isn't truly egg-shaped, i.e. wider at one end than the other. He complains, "A number of modern dictionaries have legitimated the misemployment, thereby contributing further to it." I'd be surprised if any current dictionary doesn't allow for this usage. For one thing, not all eggs are wider at one end, not even most. That is the most common shape of the bird eggs we see most often, which are probably the first eggs we think of, so one could argue it's t