But these strategies will answer what may be the wrong question, because they provide a descriptivist view of the language — one that describes how writers are using the English language. But perhaps the perspective should be prescriptivist — one that prescribes how writers should use the English language.

An excellent prescriptivist resource for the careful writer — one who strives to produce high-quality prose — is Garner’s Modern American Usage. This nearly 1,000-page book by esteemed wordsmith Bryan A. Garner, first published in 2009 and already in its third edition, is the premier guide for what writers should aspire to.

The tome’s girth is imposing, but just like any other encyclopedic reference work, it is easily digestible. (Though word nerds may find themselves gorging on one entry after another instead of actually, you know, writing.) The entries range in length from curt cross-references and concise confirmations (“gimmickry. So spelled—not gimmickery”) to brief elucidations about words, parts of speech, and types of usage errors and (usually) short essays on topics ranging from “Abbreviations” to “Zeugma.”

These latter entries vary from discussion of parts of speech like adjectives and adverbs to entries on cliches, jargon, and other usage issues to matters of style such as italics and chronological dates.

A glossary of language terms almost fifty pages long — also beginning with an entry titled “Abbreviations” and ending with one labeled “Zeugma” — follows, along with a list of usage books going back 250 years and a bibliography of more than a hundred guides to grammar, usage, style, and more. Another feature of the book is the Language-Change Index, a five-stage system of charting the persistence or introduction of nonstandard language. In addition, erroneous usage is prominently signaled by asterisks.

Garner’s style is authoritative but not arrogant (and occasionally dryly humorous), and he backs his prescriptions up with rigorous scholarship, frequently citing published examples of misuse of one word for another — for example, of cue for queue.

Other usage guides may be more friendly and less formidable, but none matches Garner for thoroughness and clarity. If you have only one such resource at hand, make it this one.

Answer: William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

If you’re searching for a motivational manifesto and how-to manual in one, this is it. Zinsser, a veteran writer and writing teacher with numerous books and magazine articles to his credit, lays it out straight in a refreshingly no-nonsense tone.

In the first part of the book, which covers principles such as simplicity and conciseness, as well as style, usage, and vocabulary, Zinsser reproduces two manuscript pages showing how he revises and pares down his work. He emphasizes the necessity of repeatedly, mercilessly honing one’s prose and makes candid comments like, “Few people realize how badly they write.” Think of On Writing Well as a virtual boot camp for writers (though Zinsser refrains from hoarsely shouted verbal abuse).

Another example: When exhorting readers to refrain from affecting a writing style, he compares the affectation to wearing a toupee: “The problem is not that [the wearer] doesn’t look well groomed; he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker’s skill. The point is that he doesn’t look like himself.”

Another section deals with consistency of technique in such areas as perspective (first person, or third person?), tense (past tense, or present tense?), and mood (casual, or formal?), with the importance of strong introductions and conclusions, and a hodgepodge of mini-lectures on a wide array of topics from parts of speech to subject matter.

The third — and thickest — portion discusses the legitimacy of nonfiction as a literary form before delving in to guidance about how to craft interviews, travel articles, memoirs, scientific and technical writing, business writing, sports writing, criticism, and humor.

Finally, Zinsser explores voice as well as the hard work of writing, with an extended diagnostic passage about the evolution of a travel article he wrote.

Looking back on this post, I note how unadorned it seems — a simple, straightforward summary of an excellent resource for beginning and veteran writers alike. But I have the feeling Zinsser would approve.

O’Conner, author (sometimes with husband Stewart Kellerman) of several other books about language, educates and entertains with humorous but forthright explanations and whimsical examples, packing a lot of information and advice into just 250 pages. (Puns are rampant, as in the chapter title “Plurals Before Swine” and the section heading “Whom Sweet Whom”).

Chapters treat such topics as pronouns, plurals, and possessives before delving into noun/verb disagreement and the like and discussing misunderstood terms such as decimate and fortuitous, confused pairs like abjure and adjure, and other problematic words and phrases. The next chapter guides poor spellers on commonly misspelled words, offering single-subject sidebars along the way on such topics as words affixed with -able and -ible endings and ful- and full- beginnings.

A short and, for writers, unnecessary chapter on pronunciation is next — skip right to the helpful survey of punctuation, followed by the most important chapter in the book (based on the frequency of perpetration of errors even among professional wordsmiths): the one on dangling modifiers.

O’Connor then offers two chapters on what not to do — a list of tired cliches that need to be sent out to pasture, and a roll call of fallacious grammatical rules (“Do not end a sentence with a preposition” and the like) — before closing with a pep talk about clarity, conciseness, and other basics of good writing.

Woe Is I is a lighthearted antidote to colorless usage manuals — a reference work you’ll actually be inspired to read cover to cover as well as thumb through when you need a refresher.

The Chicago Manual of Style, born in 1906 as a house style guide for the University of Chicago Press, has made great strides over the past century, especially since it hit puberty with the publication of the twelfth edition in 1969. Now in its sixteenth iteration, it remains the supreme authority among American book publishers and a favored resource for many journal and magazine publishers as well.

The 1,000-plus-page manual, published only in hardcover but also available by subscription online, earns its reputation as a valuable resource for writers and editors, but it’s not necessarily a must-buy.

For one thing, Chicago, as it’s informally known in the publishing industry (its name is also abbreviated to CMS or CMOS), devotes many of its pages to book-production specifications and protocol. And because of its $65 MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price), it’s quite an investment, considering that casual users are likely to consult fewer than half of its pages. (Notice that you can buy it online for around $35 though. Here’s the link to the Amazon page selling it.)

But what a trove that middle half is, especially chapter 5, “Grammar and Usage,” introduced in the fifteenth edition and updated for this one. Written by Bryan A. Garner, author of the authoritative Garner’s Modern American Usage, its 100-plus pages include a primer on parts of speech and an alphabetical glossary of problem words and phrases (basically an abridged version of his encyclopedic work mentioned above).

The next half dozen or so chapters are also essential reading; they cover, respectively, punctuation, word treatment (including plurals and possessives, italics and quotation marks, and compounds and hyphenation), names and terms, numbers, and abbreviation. Also of some utility to writers and editors are chapters on foreign languages, mathematics, and quotations and dialogue.

The first part, on the other hand, though its sections on manuscript preparation and editing and proofreading, and its chapter on rights, permissions, and copyright, might inform and interest freelancers, is directed primarily at publication staff, and its more than 200 pages of guidelines on notes, bibliography, and references are applicable only to authors whose work is published in academic journals and scholarly books, or for editors who review their copy.

The final chapter, on indexing, the first appendix, on production and digital technology, and the second one, a glossary of book-publishing terms, will interest authors who want to know more about the process of creating print and online publications, but only professional indexers and editorial and production personnel are likely to return to these pages for repeat consultation.

I’m surprised that the University of Chicago Press hasn’t acted on what at least one employee there must have thought of — publication of Part Two: Style and Usage as a separate volume that is more accessible and practical for freelance wordsmiths. However, it would be somewhat redundant to The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, a paperback volume originally conceived as a companion to Chicago that repurposes that volume’s style and usage section for a more generalist audience — not just the titular type — and includes themed exercises at the end of each chapter.

Whatever you decide about whether to own the latest (2010) edition of Chicago — you might also buy a used copy of the fifteenth edition, or even the fourteenth, both somewhat out of date but still largely applicable — consult the namesake Web site. Much of the site’s resources are available only by subscription, but the Chicago Style Q&A is a free, highly informative (and often humorous and sometimes exquisitely snarky) source.

Take-away: If you’re committed to working in academic or trade publishing in the United States, this book is probably in your future. (But, then, it should already be in your workplace.) If you’re not planning on an in-house career with a book or journal publisher, other guides and manuals are more appropriate for your professional goals, though repeated perusal of a library copy would not be a waste of time.

You’re telling me you don’t have a visual dictionary?

Before you get too self-conscious, I’ll let you off the hook: You don’t have to own your own visual dictionary. But you should know where to find this type of resource, and three others, at your local library, or you simply must do some online research and see what electronic simulacra you can discover.

1. Visual Dictionaries

The four books listed here are all superior guides to the names of physical objects and their components. Does a scene in your novel require you to distinguish the parts of a plane? Do you need to know the difference in home construction between a rafter and a joist? What is the base of a horse’s neck called? A visual dictionary knows all:

• The Macmillan Visual Dictionary, Jean-Claude Corbeil
• Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary, Merriam-Webster
• What’s What: A Visual Glossary of the Physical World, Reginald Bragonier Jr.
• Ultimate Visual Dictionary, DK Publishing

2. Guides to Symbolism

These five volumes, and others, will enlighten you about the religious, mythological, and folkloric significance of symbols. Perhaps you want to strew visual metaphors throughout your novel. Or you want to avoid cliched occult symbols in your supernatural thriller, and want to find something unusual. Or you want to make sure your medieval mystery accurately describes a cross without anachronistic errors. Follow the signs to these sources about symbology:

• An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, by J. C. Cooper
• Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them, Hans Biedermann
• 1,001 Symbols: An Illustrated Guide to Imagery and Its Meaning, Jack Tresidder
• The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier
• Reverse Symbolism Dictionary: Symbols Listed by Subject, Steven Olderr

3. Guides to Hierarchies

Do you know the order of succession among Cabinet officials in the United States in case the president, vice president, and Speaker of the House are all incapacitated? Is a battalion bigger, or smaller, than a regiment? What’s higher up the taxonomic scale — a phylum, or a family? The Order of Things: How Everything in the World Is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders, Barbara Ann Kipfer, will set you straight.

4. Reverse Dictionaries

Flip Dictionary, Barbara Ann Kipfer, is the best of the class of reference books known as reverse dictionaries, for when you know how to describe something but can’t think of the word. One of the qualities that set it apart is the numerous charts and tables that group things by subject. The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations, David Grambs, is a similar work that’ll help you transfer a word from the tip of your tongue to paper or the computer screen.