Reddit reviews Garner's Modern American Usage

Here are a few I think are good:

Getting Started

On Writing: This book is great. There are a lot of nice principles you can walk away with and a lot of people on this subreddit agree it's a great starting point!

Lots of Fiction: Nothing beats just reading a lot of good fiction, especially in other genres. It helps you explore how the greats do it and maybe pick up a few tricks along the way.

For Editing

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: there isn't anything in here that will blow your writing away, land you an agent, and secure a NYT bestseller, but it has a lot of good, practical things to keep an eye out for in your writing. It's a good starting place for when you are learning to love writing (which is mostly rewriting)

A Sense of Style by Steve Pinker: I really loved this book! It isn't exclusively about fiction, but it deals with the importance of clarity in anything that is written.

Garner's Modern American Usage: I just got this about a month ago and have wondered what I was doing before. This is my resource now for when I would normally have gone to Google and typed a question about grammar or usage or a word that I wasn't sure I was using correctly. It's a dictionary, but instead of only words, it is filled with essays and entries about everything a serious word-nut could spend the rest of their^1 life reading.

^1 ^Things ^such ^as ^the ^singular ^their ^vs ^his/hers

Publishing

Writer's Market 2016: There are too many different resources a writer can use to get published, but Writer's Market has a listing for Agents, publishers, magazines, journals, and contests. I think it's a good start once you find your work ready and polished.

There are too many books out there that I haven't read and have heard good things about as well. They will probably be mentioned above in this thread.

Another resource I have learned the most from are books I think are terrible. It allows you to read something, see that it doesn't work, and makes you process exactly what the author did wrong. You can find plenty of bad fiction if you look hard enough! I hope some of this helps!

[This book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195382757?pc_redir=1408272184&robot_redir=1) has at least ten times as many entries as that article.

http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner/dp/0195382757

Dictionaries are pretty much fully descriptive these days. This wasn't always the case, but it is today, and it means that they stay away from judgments about which definitions are correct and just report the actual usage.

So you can't look to a descriptive source and presume to find prescriptive guidance: the lack of judgment doesn't mean the usage is good, and it certainly doesn't mean that others won't make judgments about your use of a term. E.g., Bryan Garner says,

> When literally is used figuratively -- to mean "emphatically," "metaphorically," or the like -- the word is stretched paper-thin (but not literally).

I and many others would agree with this assessment.

Certainly literally is in as bit of a touchy spot. Perhaps, going back to Garner, literally is in stage two of his categorization of verbal change:

> Stage 2: The form spreads to a significant portion of the language community, but it remains unacceptable in standard usage... Terms in stage 2 often get recorded in dictionaries as variant forms, but this fact alone is hardly a recommendation for their use.

Maybe it has even reached stage three ("The form becomes commonplace among well-educated people, but is still avoided in careful usage.")

But again, this change is not necessarily good, and not necessarily inevitable. And until and if the transformation becomes universally accepted, you have to accept that many people will label the figurative use of literally a mistake. It's their judgment to make, not the dictionaries'.

I recommend Garner's book. Avoid The Elements of Style. It's a random group of "rules" and teaches nothing about Standard American English.

Sidenote: This guy?

http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf

EDIT: And hey, http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner/dp/0195382757, while you're at it.

Response to your edit: You might disagree with those interpretations, but I would argue that your battle is over the appropriateness of the word "racism," not what was actually going on in his statements. That's why I personally don't like using "racism" in that way, it starts angry arguments about language when people should be having discussions about other things. (Like what's happening right now.)

How do I link to a print book? Here you go I guess.

http://www.amazon.com/Garners-Modern-American-Usage-Garner/dp/0195382757/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341792352&sr=8-1&keywords=garners+usage

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-American-Usage-Wilson-Follett/dp/080900139X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341792372&sr=1-3&keywords=Follett+Modern+American+Usage

Those who've studied grammar and usage know of authors like Garner, Follett, and Fowler. I didn't know I needed to hold your hand. Yes, these are just "opinions" of the authors. However, these authors are the widely acknowledged to be the foremost authorities on usage.

If you're interested in learning something, Garner's "opinion" on hopefully runs for three columns . . . I suggest you check it out.