Suggested Reading:

Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (Random House, January) by Benjamin Dreyer

The longtime copy chief of Random House, who has copy edited books by authors such as E. L. Doctorow, David Ebershoff, Frank Rich, and Elizabeth Strout, offers authoritative yet amusing lessons on punctuation, grammar, and other rules and non-rules of writing, including “confusables” (affect/effect), “trimmables” (added bonus, end result), and miscellany (“you don’t tow the line, you toe it”) in a fun, appealing style that puts a contemporary spin on William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style.