The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers [antikvár]

Introduction The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers is a different kind of literary dictionary. Its focus is not so much literature, literary history, and belles lettres as it is the nuts and bolts of writing itself. Although many of the words defined are old, their use—or usefulness—today is emphasized. Besides including many terms not found in scholastic literary handbooks and even unabridged American and British dictionaries, the book differs from other literary references in two respects. First, it is single-mindedly a glossary of terms related to prose and the devices of everyday speech, and hence does not include the numerous poetry (prosody) and classical drama terms commonly saturating other literary handbooks. Nor is this another lexicon of authors, works, or literary characters and periods with a history-of-English-literature slant. My intent has all along been simply to gather in one place words about words, terms of interest to the working writer and to any person who reads with a critical eye and likes to discuss the graces, tricks, and fine points involved in using the English language. Second, it is a gallimaufry not only of traditional literary terms (allegory, metonymy, onomatopoeia, and the like) but also of hundreds of others related to language and writing: from journalism, linguistics, book reviewing, logic (and illogic), grammar, rhetoric, political speechwriting, editing and publishing, and to some extent advertising. (The highly technical terminology of phonetics is for the most part excluded, and this is not a book about graphology.) The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers also includes numerous distinctively British expressions and literary Latin and French borrowings as well as useful terms coined by writers and linguists that appear in no other dictionary. This would seem to be an opportune time for publication of a lexicon focused on the craft of writing. Interest by Americans in the state of the language, and not a little concern about the way it is used, has perhaps never been greater than it is nowadays. If there was a groundbreaker for this period of fascination with words and writing, it was probably Edwin Newman's popular Strictly Speaking, a wry report on our native tongue's slippage published VII