Just because I love technology and spend a lot of time on the web, and writing for the web, doesn’t mean I’ve eschewed books.
Read MoreA few of my reference books

reference
Just because I love technology and spend a lot of time on the web, and writing for the web, doesn’t mean I’ve eschewed books.
Read MoreThis book may be thirty years old, but its advice is still pertinent. If you want to have a blitz or crackdown against, or shake-up of, bad writing (all examples of 'tabloidese'), then this is the book for you.
Read MoreI’ve been enjoying delving into the meaning of some of the expressions we come across all the time — and a few we don’t.
Read MoreLibrary shelves, by Terry Freedman
In the central library close to my home, around 30 years ago, there was a brilliant librarian in the Reference section. It didn’t matter what you asked him, he would know the answer.
Read MoreThere are two broad kinds of style guide. There is the generic type, containing advice on such things as whether to use “different from” or “different than”. And there is the specific type, ie specific to a particular publication. For example, should “internet” be spelled with a lower case “i”, or as “Internet”?. The specific style guide will tell you.
Read MoreThis book may be thirty years old, but its advice is still pertinent. If you want to have a blitz or crackdown against, or shake-up of, bad writing (all examples of 'tabloidese'), then this is the book for you.
Read MoreYou need both types, of course, but unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as your needing only two books or two documents.
Before anyone tells me that the plural of “thesaurus” should “thesauri” rather than “thesauruses”, which is what I’d have thought myself, apparently it can be either, according to the Oxford dictionary.
I find a thesaurus to be indispensable on those occasions when the most appropriate word is on the tip of my tongue,
I’m used to using the Oxford English dictionary and similar reference works, to which I have access through my library membership, so I wasn't feeling tremendously optimistic when I approached
Just because I love technology and spend a lot of time on the web, and writing for the web, doesn’t mean I’ve eschewed books. I still use books extensively (and intensively) for my writing. Not any books either, but ones written or contributed to by experts.
I think if you’re serious about writing you don’t want to be messing about with so-called “crowd-sourced” information, which may or may not be correct.