Benjamin Dreyer
American author and copy editor

Benjamin Dreyer (born May 11, 1958) is an American writer and copy editor. He was copy chief at Random House until he retired in 2023. He is the author of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (2019). The Washington Post called Dreyer "the unofficial language guru on Twitter".
Early life
Dreyer was born May 11, 1958 in a Jewish family. He grew up in Queens, New York and Albertson, Long Island. He attended Northwestern University.
Career
Early in his career, Dreyer pursued writing and acting. He worked in bars and restaurants before turning to freelance proofreading, and then copy editing. In 1993, he joined Random House full time as a production editor.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q61268133. VIAF identifies the subject as 16154074459711742285. The Library of Congress control number is no2018142430. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2023, 2019 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Dreyer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.