At 10:09 AM 4/17/97 -0400, Ross Weeks wrote:
>My favorite source for English usage is Ted Bernstein's "The Careful
>Writer" (1966).

I'll share my favourite source with Ross Week's great source on this topic:

Richard Mitchell (who calls himself The Underground Grammarian), _Less than
Words Can Say_ (1979), Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.

The book's back covers offers this:
        "In _Less Than Words Can Say_, Richard Mitchell lets rip the most
devastating expose to date of our rampant misuse of English.  A Don
Quixote--Savonarolo might be more apt--of language, he wages war on its
perverters, from teachers to deans to politicians and bureaucrats, whose
consistently overblown prose offers us inanity in the guise of wisdom....
        "According to Mitchell, this bureaucratic jargon is turning us into
a nation of baffled, inept, frustrated, and--ultimately--violent people, and
the public schools are to blame...."

It goes on.  So does the book.  Great stuff.

Kersti Krug