[.ca] Usage And Abusage (ISBN 0393317099)

From Amazon.com:
Eric Partridge was a master of linguistic scholarship. Author of A Dictionary of Cliches, Shakespeare's Bawdy, and many others, Partridge's Usage and Abusage, first out in 1942, was last updated by him in 1973, six years before his death. But life and language tick on, even without Partridge. Now, Janet Whitcut has revised his classic to keep up with the 1990s. One is reminded that "ablution is now intolerably pedantic" for "hand washing," that errata should be confined to corrections in books, and that precipitously (very steeply) should not be misused in the place of precipitately (violently hurried). The entry on punctuation runs for pages and is lucid, literate, and lively. The "Vogue Words" section is completely updated and provides today's connotations for words and phrases from academic to yuppie, rounding out a scholarly reference that maintains the Partridge standard.

English:
There is no right or wrong way of using language. But there is a formal dialect which we need to use for writing essays and exams, giving speechs etc. This book teaches you all the conventions that you need to know for this. It gives precise rules, and its alphabetical ordering of hundreds of entries makes any problem you have about usage easy to find and solve.