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Grammar as Resistance in the Trump Era
A new book on language gently promotes better citizenship through copy editing
Is it possible these days to come across any book on clarity and style in the use of English — and not think of the 45th president of the United States?
The book I’m reading is Dreyer’s English. It is written by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Random House.
“Go light on the exclamation points,” advises Dreyer early in the book. He says that exclamation points are “bossy, hectoring, and ultimately wearying.” When I read that I was reminded of a BBC report that had the following observation: “According to the Trump Twitter Archive, in 2016 alone the @realDonaldTrump posted 2,251 tweets using exclamation marks.” I was tempted to add an exclamation mark while presenting that fact to you but here is Dreyer again: “Some writers recommend that you should use no more than a dozen exclamation points per book; others insist that you should use no more than a dozen exclamation points in a lifetime.”
I’ll confess that Trump brings out the wannabe copy editor in me. But Dreyer has a light touch. His references to Trump are infrequent and only glancing ones. A footnote points out that while in some cases the “more or less random” use of quotation marks is amusing, “in the tweets of…
