[zimpenfish]

Do you have any linguists consulting / on staff?

Bryan Garner might be a careful compiler but doesn't seem to be a linguist and seems to be a traditionalist who makes simple errors.

e.g. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001869.h...

"His chapter is unfortunately full of repetitions of stupidities of the past tradition in English grammar — more of them than you could shake a stick at."

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5630

"So why did Bryan Garner, a highly intelligent and insightful person, make this elementary error?"

http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2007/01/02/editing-chicago/

"A good editor should know that Bryan Garner’s take on the subject is misleading and incorrect. It’s become apparent to me that many of the self-appointed guardians of the language don’t even know what it is they’re guarding."

etc.etc.

[mturmon]

You're implying that there is some kind of well-accepted notion of Bryan Garner being a poor guide to usage, but you link to some articles that are just nitpicking small terminology differences.

The second link in particular is tendentious. It claims Garner gives "a savage indictment of the behavior and character of those who use Stage 1 words [new usages]" in his book MAU.

But if you follow to the linked page from MAU, you read that Garner is, in an appendix, giving a series of wry analogies for the process of acceptance of new terms -- not a savage indictment at all. In other words, Garner is not himself saying all new usages have "a grade of F", etc., he's saying that is how some new usages will be perceived, in a very gross and qualitative sense, by a strict static conception of the language.

Since Garner comes right out and explicitly says all of the above, the link you cite comes off as picking a fight. There's nothing there.

Having read MAU (back in its first edition), I have to say that Garner strikes me as a very good guide to usage. I still enjoy perusing the book.

Taken as a whole, do you really have significant issues with MAU as a usage guide?

[zimpenfish]

> some kind of well-accepted notion of Bryan Garner being a poor guide to usage

Wasn't my intention - merely pointing out that he's not a linguist and making simple errors should give anyone using him as an "authority" considerable pause.

> do you really have significant issues with MAU as a usage guide?

I am neither an American nor a linguist - which makes me doubly unqualified to comment. That I leave to experts.

[jonstokes]

^^ This right here, is exactly what I'm talking about.

Again, the idea of prose linting is not terrible, and in fact I do a hacked up version of it with a set of standard "find/replace" operations for specific writers who have specific issues. But a giant, general-purpose ball of rules of dubious provenance applied to a generic abstraction called "prose", is what I take issue with.

[capnrefsmmat]

Garner's focus is on usage, not grammar, so for a usage linter, this doesn't seem like a big problem.

Is there an accessible, comprehensive, easy-to-read guide like Garner's Modern American Usage that's considered more accurate? There don't seem to be many options.

(I have a copy of GMAU and enjoy it, but mostly for discussion of usage, not the details of grammar)