A WORLD WITHOUT ‘WHOM’

(Bloomsbury £12.99) THE style guides of newspapers are formidably bossy entities, full of stern instructions about the arcane difference between ‘due to’ and ‘owing to’, and when the term ‘run amok’ may be used correctly ( basically, never). But Emmy J. Favilla, the former copy chief of BuzzFeed, has a refreshingly relaxed approach to language. ‘We don’t need a dang dictionary to tell us what’s real and what’s not,’ she says.

When the Buzzfeed Style Guide went public in 2014, it attracted huge attention as the ‘unofficial style guide for the internet’.

Clever, funny and occasionally a bit scary, Favilla is possibly the only person alive under 50 who knows the difference between ‘discreet’ and ‘discrete’, and uses the latter with dazzling confidence. For that alone her book is worth the cover price.