ABSTRACT
The idea for a usage guide often comes from publishers, who invite well-known writers to contribute to a profitable market for usage advice. But since usage guides are a typical product of linguistic amateurs, a method is developed to measure and analyse the formal expertise – and authority – of usage guide writers. Factors contributing to their expertise are age (and experience), profession, education, occupation and other relevant credentials. The classification is needed in view of the large number of usage guides available: which one carries the most prestige, and, consequently, how reliable is their usage advice? Classifying usage guide writers – here, those from the HUGE database – on the basis of formal credentials will enable further systematic analysis of the quality of available usage guides. Discussing which publishers are involved in the trade, the chapter tries to assess why some usage guides – not necessarily those by the authors with the most credentials – sell better than others, based on sales data, popularity abroad (translations) and publication online.
