The Books Podcast: the right way to write with Benjamin Dreyer

In this week’s Spectator Books podcast my guest is Benjamin Dreyer — whose name is pronounced, as I discover live on air, ‘Dryer’ rather than ‘Drayer’. That seems an apt way to be introduced to a man who, as Random House US’s Copy Chief, makes his living correcting errors. His new book Dreyer’s English is a compendium of useful tricks of the trade, sharp opinions and authoritative rulings on everything to do with language and style. We talk transatlantic language differences, angry pedants, and punctuation nitty-gritty, with special reference to Steven Pinker, the New Yorker and Guns N’ Roses.