Having started college as an English major I like to recommend Strunk & White Elements of Style also. Great writing tips as well as a small glossary like what you described above

Here's an interesting entry. "Nauseous. [versus] Nauseated. The first means 'sickening to contemplate'; the second means 'sick at the stomach.' Do not, therefore, say 'I feel nauseous,' unless you are sure you have that effect on others."

I think that one resonates with me because when I was a child my mother would ask, when I had a stomache, "do you feel nauseous?" -D

Hmm, Dan I am UK born and bred and I and my friends have always used "nauseous" to mean "sick at the stomach". Strunk and White is a fine book, but word usage does change.

I recommend The Language Instinct for a healthy does of skepticism about the pronouncements of the "Language Mavens" as Pinker delightfully dubs them. Did you know that "uninterested" and "disinterested" used to mean the same thing? As Pinker points out, many who rant about "proper usage" have no idea how language actually works.

I've actually read The Language Instinct (and parts of Blank Slate) for a linguistics course I had to take. It [the course in general] never did completely convince me; though there may not be a universal dialect of any language there are still conventions that, depending on the region you are in, should be followed if you want to (at least) appear educated/intelligent (Not the same thing but often considered as such).

I've come to think of language/dialect as part of your image anyway. Let's say that you either make a grammatical mistake or use a word in a manner that is precise but uncommon; either way you'll likely be looked at poorly. You can then recommend all of the books to the pedant that you'd like and you won't change their mind. I think it was William Zinser that wrote that you just have to have a "good ear" for what sounds right (maybe that should be in quotes eh?). Cheers -D

Always find your comments interesting David. Just have trouble when certain authors are very doctrinaire in their rules for the English language. We should do our best to be careful what words we use. But certain words have wider definitions than some would have us believe (even if originally a certain word meant something else).

According to the dictionary at Brittanica.com, geriatric means:

1 plural but singular in construction : a branch of medicine that deals with the problems and diseases of old age and aging people -- compare GERONTOLOGY
2 : an aged person

Thus "elderly" and geriatric are synonymous by the second definition.

Dan writes:

there are still conventions that, depending on the region you are in, should be followed

Oh sure! Pinker's point is that these are just conventions, for all that they are presented as "proper grammar". He argues that many of these prescriptive "rules of grammar" in fact completely contradict how grammar actually works. See William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior for a humorous (sorry, that should be an humorous) example of the sort of thing Pinker is getting at. (Pinker dissects one of Safire's real-life statements in The Language Instinct.) I haven't read The Blank Slate, so I've no idea how convincing that is.

How about the "mute" point, so commonly used?

Lori writes:

How about the "mute" point, ...

Is this in reply to me? I had to Google for it as I'd not heard it before. It seems fine grammatically; what's to complain about "[adjective] [noun]"? (Incidentally, while Googling I noticed that many commentators describe any perceived error as "grammatical", including spelling errors, malapropisms, slang, whatnot.)

"Mute point" looks like a new phrase that was invented by punning on an old one. I rather like it. Of course some people may use because they misremembered the original "moot point". And some may think that it's usage is such an error even when the speaker knows what they are saying. But that will happen less and less often if the phrase becomes popular.

By the way, I have always interpreted "moot point" as its older meaning of "debatable point" rather than the more modern "irrelevant point". I obviously need to keep up with the times more.