Your Own Words

If you have a language question, where do you go for the answer? How do you keep proper syntax from sounding stiff, and, on the other hand, how do you keep conversational language from being embarrassingly incorrect?

Barbara Wallraff, the author of The Atlantic's Word Court column, offers answers to these crucial questions. On one level, Your Own Words is a guide to using and understanding language references—dictionaries, thesauruses, stylebooks, usage guides, grammars, writing guides, and ...