What's Behind Me?

By Johnny D. Boggs

A fellow writer asked what dictionary I use.

Hey, I did not say that this was a stimulating conversation.

I turned around, made notes, and answered that a Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary sits right behind me. Deluxe Second Edition. I probably could buy a new one, but with the plethora of online dictionaries, is that worthwhile? Besides, next to that is Webster’s unabridged An American Dictionary of the English Language from 1860.

Since I mostly write historical fiction, I probably pull the latter out more than the modern Webster’s. Unless I pick up that 1876 copy of Webster’s A Common-School Dictionary of the English Language.

Then I spy the two-volume A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles from 1951, which I often peruse, unless I grab Richard Thornton’s two-volume An American Glossary from 1962.

My Roget’s Thesaurus is A Treasury of English Words and Phrases from 1883.

An atlas? Well, there’s a modern Rand McNally, but I also have a Cram’s Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World Indexed from 1885. I have to be careful with that one, because I can look at maps for hours.

Wow. I just learned something. My hometown of Timmonsville, South Carolina, was in Darlington County in 1885. That find sends me to Google to learn that Florence County wasn’t first formed until 1888.

My King James Bible is from 1868. Translations have changed over the years, you see.

For grammar I have that bible commonly known as “Strunk and White” but properly called The Elements of Style. It’s the Fourth Edition, but I still have the battered Third Edition that I used all through journalism school and my newspaper career.

The Elements of Editing and The Elements of Grammar sit next to the well-read On Writing Well by William Zinsser and Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition.

Those are the closest constant books. History books and biographies, etc., might be stacked in front of that shelf, but those will change depending on what I’m working on at the time.

Then there are books on the shelves above the printer. First Names. The Chicago Manual of Style. The Washington Post Deskbook on Style (to see what Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee might have been reading circa 1972-1974). A modern Roget’s (well, it was modern when I bought it in college). Tons of books on slang – always make sure slang references include an etymology if you’re writing historical fiction –  and English usage.

More reference books, books on firearms, 19th Century catalogs from Bloomingdale’s, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. … Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable … Old West dictionaries … the 1955 reprint of Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society … Colonial American English … The Complete Oxford Shakespeare (there's also a 1942 edition of The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare from Houghton Mifflin somewhere around here) … foreign-language dictionaries … various state historical atlases … David Dary’s Frontier Medicine … 19th Century baseball rulebooks … Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing (to keep me grounded) … and even the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which a foul-mouthed writer recommended to me years ago.

Yes, you are absolutely right. The writer who asked me what dictionary I use was sorry he asked.