Ntc's Pocket Guide for Doubtful Spellers

by David C. Downing

Includes an appendix of spelling rules in a reference that lists the correct spelling and the most common spelling mistakes for more than twenty thousand words. Original.

316 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

I am a professor of English at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This is on the edge of "Amish country," and I sometimes pass a horse and buggy on my way to and from campus.

I grew up in Colorado, went to college in Santa Barbara, CA, and earned my PhD from UCLA. I currently teach professional and creative writing at Elizabethtown, as well as a first-year seminar on quest narratives.

I first read the Narnia Chronicles as a college sophomore. I was so enthralled, I read all seven books in a month, then re-read them again the next month. I published my first article on C. S. Lewis that same year. I tackled Lord of the Rings in my junior year of college, and I still remember reading all night, the sun coming up just when I discovered that Gandalf had returned. What a glorious dawn that was!

Living less that an hour from Gettysburg, I have become one of many Civil War buffs in this part of the country. I published A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy in 2007, a study of Southerners who supported the Union during the war.

My wife, Crystal, is a professor of English and film studies at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers (2004) and How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith (2006).