How Grammar Girl Does Research

In honor of National Grammar Day, I thought it would be good to share some of my favorite resources with you, and explain why I like them, so if you find yourself getting curious about language, you’ll know where to start your research.

Sometimes when I do interviews, people ask me if I were stranded on a desert island, what one book would I bring with me, and I always insist on bringing two:

Garner’s Modern English Usage and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage because they complement each other so well.

Garner’s Modern English Usage

Garner’s Modern English Usage is written by Bryan Garner, a lawyer and prolific author who also produces Black’s Law Dictionary. Garner’s Modern English Usage is more than 900 pages (with type on the small side), and it covers almost any English usage question you’d have. Only a few times a year do I go searching there and come up empty handed.

Besides its comprehensiveness, another thing I love about this book is that Garner has created a Language-Change Index to rank how common and accepted a changing usage is. For example, Stage 1 is essentially a common error that nobody likes, and Stage 5 is a change that everyone now accepts. 

For example, he defines using “affect” with an A in the phrase “to affect change” as Stage 1 because it happens with some regularity, but it’s something an editor would definitely correct without any debate. But calling the delicious fall drink “apple cider” and calling a graduate of a school an “alum” instead of an “alumnus” or “alumni” are both Stage 5 on his Language-Change Index, objected to at some point in the past, but now completely fine.

Garner is a great source for a quick, clear answer and a bit of explanation.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage

While Garner tends to be on the prescriptive side, with its assigning of numerical rank, the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (affectionately abbreviated MWDEU) is more on the descriptive side, telling the story of how usage has changed and been discussed sometimes going back hundreds of years.

Where MWDEU really shines is the middle range of language change—the 3s on Garner’s scale. For example, on using the word “impact” as a verb that means “...

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