And in addition to the dictionaries?

[SamScribble]

Having established that many of us are secret (or not so secret) ‘dictionaryistas’, I ‘m wondering what other reference books you keep at hand.

On my desk, next to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, I have a copy of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Well, it was new almost 20 years ago when Robert Burchfield and his team updated Henry Watson Fowler’s 1926 original. (I also have a copy of the 1926 version; but it has probably been a year or three since it was taken from the bookshelf.)

The thing about ‘Fowler’ is that it’s very, very readable. You consult it in order to find the answer to a specific question or to allay a slight doubt; and, 20 minutes later, you find yourself still reading and stocking up on answers to questions you hadn’t even thought to ask.

Two other volumes that I tend to consult reasonably frequently are the Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors, and the Economist Style Guide – available at all good booksellers, for just two shillings and sixpence. And, yes, you are quite right: I made that last bit up.

Aside from your favourite dictionary, what else do you keep at hand?

 

[OliviaM]

Having established that many of us are secret (or not so secret) ‘dictionaryistas’, I ‘m wondering what other reference books you keep at hand.

On my desk, next to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, I have a copy of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Well, it was new almost 20 years ago when Robert Burchfield and his team updated Henry Watson Fowler’s 1926 original. (I also have a copy of the 1926 version; but it has probably been a year or three since it was taken from the bookshelf.)

The thing about ‘Fowler’ is that it’s very, very readable. You consult it in order to find the answer to a specific question or to allay a slight doubt; and, 20 minutes later, you find yourself still reading and stocking up on answers to questions you hadn’t even thought to ask.

Two other volumes that I tend to consult reasonably frequently are the Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors, and the Economist Style Guide – available at all good booksellers, for just two shillings and sixpence. And, yes, you are quite right: I made that last bit up.

Aside from your favourite dictionary, what else do you keep at hand?

I no longer use books for immediate reference. It's much easier for me to switch windows and search an online dictionary or thesaurus. It takes the least amount of time and I don't lose momentum.

The reference books I do own are the sort I read when I'm not writing:

The Elements of Style / Strunk & White
"On Writing" by Stephen King's -- some very helpful thoughts
The Chicago Manual of Style -- a huge, intimidating tome that I only just purchased. Your only options there are paper ($60 for me) or an online yearly subscription ($35). It came highly recommended, though.

 

[Handley_Page]

I have a copy of Fowler and I think it's great.
I also have Gwynne's Grammar (EBURY Press) which is a very handy book.

 

[oggbashan]

I mentioned the Baby Names book collection in the other thread. Apart from those I have multiple dictionaries of quotations; several versions of The Bible; the complete works of Shakespeare; multiple editions of the Oxford Companion to Literature and the Cambridge Guide to Literature; classical dictionaries of myth and religion; Graves' Greek Myths; Bullfinch's Mythology; the complete unexpurgated 1001 Nights - and all those are in my small study.

Elsewhere I have many atlases from the full Times Atlas of the World; Historical Atlases showing the known World in Roman and Medieval periods; an almost complete collection of the first one-inch to a mile maps of England and Wales; road atlases from the 1920s to current; Atlases of Elizabethan; Georgian and Victorian London; A-Z or earlier equivalent atlases of London from 1901 through the 1920s, 30s and 40s to date; an Atlas of the bomb damage to London 1939-1945...

And then there's the library...

 

[Penuche]

There's a thesaurus, on the same shelf as a rather outdated Concise Oxford English dictionary with thumb index.

One of my non English reference favourites for dipping into was a 3" thick paperback of German idioms, what they meant, and where they'd come, with line drawings on almost every other page.

Unfortunately, after surviving umpteen moves in over 20 years, a flood in the wetroom finally meant it had to be recycled.

On the bright side, I've now got a great excuse to browse for a newer repalcement.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I've got the text books I'm teaching from, do they count? And all my academic books. And three different editions of the 1001 nights, illustrated by different orientalist artists.

I also collect illustrated editions of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, after reading a short story of Saki's in which Reginald protested that he wasn't doing so and didn't want any more as Christmas presents. It's surprising how many there are. (Anyone who would like to send me one for Christmas can be assured it will have a very good home with all of the others on the little shelf above that beauteous piece of artwork Ogg once bestowed on me in an act of unparalled kindness and self sacrifice - see below.)

A lot of the course material for my university is now online. (I teach distance learning, not at a traditional university.) As well as two text books, the students get a week-by-week study planner to work through, with videos, audio clips and exercises. As part of that they have a module glossary - online. They have a Forum they go into, where I have to curb my style a bit when I moderate it . Sometimes they post links they've found to online sources for tips about how to write well. They also post about a particularly good book on essay writing which the university publishes.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I hold to a theory that proposes almost all new information for any particular subject is nonsense. Real utility is as scares as novel prime numbers. Most scholars chase their tails, and I cant identify more than 6 people capable of explaining what they do in a coherent and cohesive style. I recall psychiatric disorders whose scholarship fills whole libraries tho the gist of the disorder fills one sentence. Einstein or some other philosophical PILOT suggested we're fulla shit when we cant explain what we know in a paragraph or less.

I got rid of my psychiatric library long ago. I know the disorders. As I say, when I see a lion running at me I haul ass rather than reach for my calculator to work a Bayes Risk Probabilty formula as Brits do with Muslim lions..

 

[NaokoSmith]

Yes but it's so much fun counting the angels on the head of the pin

And sometimes the scholarship comes in handy. I keep meaning to write up a comparison I drew between studies showing how in British society thirty years ago, people were terrified of Rastafarian young men, believing they were going to bring down civilisation as we know it, and how nowadays we are paranoid in similar ways about Muslim young men.

 

[Ezrollin]

I use an online dictionary and thesaurus... i have several books: Structuring your novel, Creating Plot, The Essentials of Grammar and The Elements of Style which I picked up a second hand book store. This is like going back to school for me. I didn't realize how inept my grammar was until I started to write.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Yes but it's so much fun counting the angels on the head of the pin

And sometimes the scholarship comes in handy. I keep meaning to write up a comparison I drew between studies showing how in British society thirty years ago, people were terrified of Rastafarian young men, believing they were going to bring down civilisation as we know it, and how nowadays we are paranoid in similar ways about Muslim young men.

You make my point. 50 years ago moms made boys schizophrenic, and 30 years ago retro-viruses were the villains. Neither hypothesis is correct. Back in 1950 Harry Stack Sullivan had hospital staff beat schizophrenics, to make contact with them, and Sullivan was a VIP scholar. One silly idea follows another. A few suspect we're all born schizophrenic, and I don't laugh at the idea. Julian Jaynes said we evolved from schizophrenic ancestors about 500BC..

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Aside from your favourite dictionary, what else do you keep at hand?

I have the internets on my desk. It knows everything, to a sufficient degree of accuracy.

I do have a book of math formulas printed back, I think, in the 40s or 50s. Math doesn't go out of style and very rarely gets disproven so it's still a good book. That doesn't show up in my writing here, though. At least it hasn't yet. Hmmm...

But perhaps I shouldn't get off on a tangent.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

My kids were in school when I went thru college. Helping them with their math homework I used what I learned from college, but the schools had cows over the methods I used. I taught them shit. Yet it was the same math I learned in the 60s at school.

 

[Carnevil9]

I keep a copy of "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words" handy at all times. For when you need juuuuust the right word.

https://www.amazon.com/Byrnes-Dictionary-Unusual-Obscure-Preposterous/dp/1559722339

 

[FknNemesis]

I tend to learn better from printed works than from digital screens so every time there's a larger update to a programming language or a new language, at some point I will get books for it. The attic at my parents' place also still holds all my index cards from back in the day.

In praxis though I digitize as much as possible and everything is stored on a server I can access from anywhere. Over the years here in Asia my personal [physical] library has also become the library at work.

Comics being the exception. In my defense though... I'm a digital nomad and books are a pain to move internationally, especially while currently I don't really have plans yet to settle until the end of my days.

If some day I have been lucky enough financially, my ultimate dream is not a sports car or a house with many bed/bathrooms. It is a house with a multiple story private library.
I'm a nerd so the selection would undoubtedly be larger in non-fiction than in fiction works.

 

[NotWise]

The printed reference I use most often is the 55th edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It's been with me since I was an undergrad in the mid-1970's. My father kept the edition (39th if I remember right) that he used as a undergrad in the late 1940's and I used that while I was growing up.

The "Handbook" is inaptly named, since it's a large volume and about four inches thick.

 

[trysail]

I keep a copy of "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words" handy at all times. For when you need juuuuust the right word.

https://www.amazon.com/Byrnes-Dictionary-Unusual-Obscure-Preposterous/dp/1559722339

I'll be damned. I thought I owned the only remaining copy.





(you do know that Mrs. Byrne is the daughter of the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz, don't you? )




​

 

[oggbashan]

The printed reference I use most often is the 55th edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It's been with me since I was an undergrad in the mid-1970's. My father kept the edition (39th if I remember right) that he used as a undergrad in the late 1940's and I used that while I was growing up.

The "Handbook" is inaptly named, since it's a large volume and about four inches thick.

For many years I used to have a 1959 copy of Finch and Trewartha: Elements of Geography. It was a revelation after English Geography text books in use then that were heavy of words and light on pictures. Finch and Trewartha was much more accessible.

 

[SamScribble]

I'll be damned. I thought I owned the only remaining copy.
​

Not quite. Although my copy of 'Mrs Byrne' is getting to the stage in life where it bears more resemblance to a pile of loose pages than to a bound book.​

 

[sheablue]

I mentioned the Baby Names book collection in the other thread. Apart from those I have multiple dictionaries of quotations; several versions of The Bible; the complete works of Shakespeare; multiple editions of the Oxford Companion to Literature and the Cambridge Guide to Literature; classical dictionaries of myth and religion; Graves' Greek Myths; Bullfinch's Mythology; the complete unexpurgated 1001 Nights - and all those are in my small study.

Elsewhere I have many atlases from the full Times Atlas of the World; Historical Atlases showing the known World in Roman and Medieval periods; an almost complete collection of the first one-inch to a mile maps of England and Wales; road atlases from the 1920s to current; Atlases of Elizabethan; Georgian and Victorian London; A-Z or earlier equivalent atlases of London from 1901 through the 1920s, 30s and 40s to date; an Atlas of the bomb damage to London 1939-1945...

And then there's the library...

I bet the atlases are dreamy. I love old maps and would love to have a collection of atlases! I was just thinking I needed a good modern atlas for my kids and their schoolwork. We have a globe they use, and the computer, of course, but sometimes you just need to trace a river or border with your finger. I find maps to be a hands-on tool.

That being said, for writing I mostly use online references, mainly because both my paper dictionary and thesaurus are quite old from when I was in college and the internet hadn't been invented yet.

I did make my 11-year-old use the "real" dictionary for a school assignment this past year, which he thought was torture. But then he entertained himself looking up bad words.

I have Stephen King's On Writing, which I enjoy, and a little book called, "Woe is I" about usage of common terms that I find quite enlightening.

 

[purplexkitten]

In addition to my dictionary, I have the Gregg Reference Manual, the Chicago Manual of Style and a thesaurus. Words are porn. Those are just on my desk. I have so many other reference books throughout the house. I love having research material at my fingertips.

 

[NotWise]

I bet the atlases are dreamy. I love old maps and would love to have a collection of atlases! I was just thinking I needed a good modern atlas for my kids and their schoolwork. We have a globe they use, and the computer, of course, but sometimes you just need to trace a river or border with your finger. I find maps to be a hands-on tool.

I love maps. My office walls--the ones that aren't book shelves--are covered with them, but globes can be even better.

As a birthday present, one of my daughters and her (then) boyfriend gave me an old globe. The challenge is to date old globes using the political geography they show. After some study and research I concluded that it came from 1939, just as Europe was about to explode.

 

[sheablue]

I love maps. My office walls--the ones that aren't book shelves--are covered with them, but globes can be even better.

As a birthday present, one of my daughters and her (then) boyfriend gave me an old globe. The challenge is to date old globes using the political geography they show. After some study and research I concluded that it came from 1939, just as Europe was about to explode.

Very cool! I love old globes, as well. A 1939 globe would be amazing! My kids' globe is all electronic and they can touch parts of it with a stylus and it will tell about that region. It's pretty neat. When it works.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Very cool! I love old globes, as well. A 1939 globe would be amazing! My kids' globe is all electronic and they can touch parts of it with a stylus and it will tell about that region. It's pretty neat. When it works.

I was just thinking what a great thing, and I must ask about it so I can get Piglet one, when I got to 'When it works'

 

[oggbashan]

I love maps. My office walls--the ones that aren't book shelves--are covered with them, but globes can be even better.

As a birthday present, one of my daughters and her (then) boyfriend gave me an old globe. The challenge is to date old globes using the political geography they show. After some study and research I concluded that it came from 1939, just as Europe was about to explode.

The political boundaries of 1939 tended to be shown on maps and globes until about 1950. Similarly the pre-1914 boundaries were shown until about 1925. The atlases at my first school showed the British Empire in red as at 1912. We were supposed to celebrate Commonwealth Day but the teachers still called it Empire Day.

This year I gave my collection of local maps to our museum. They were from the 1890s to the 1970s and all large scale. The older ones were six inches to a mile. The 1950s to 1970s ones were 25 or 50 inches to the mile. Those show greenhouses, outhouses and street light poles.

There have been several globes in our local auction but most have been crude but large 'antiqued' 1980s ones sold as room decoration. Some were even hinged to reveal the drink bottles inside. There was a nice smaller one last week mounted in a double gimbal but it was badly weighted. Whatever you did, Antarctica stayed on top.

 

[NotWise]

The political boundaries of 1939 tended to be shown on maps and globes until about 1950.

There was a change--I think it was the border between Peru and Ecuador, but I'm not sure--that pinned the globe at not later than 1939, but it showed western Czechoslovakia annexed to Germany, which happened in 1938.