[1] The book has been credited as the "first detailed study of Present-Day English word-formation".

[2] The book is composed of nine chapters in which he discusses English word-formation as well as what Bauer sees as its main problem areas, which he defines as including restricted productivity,[3] lexicalization, syntax, and semantics.

English Word-Formation begins with an introduction section and moves into its next chapter, which discusses some basic concepts.

"[5] Scholar Susanne Mühleisen has also criticized English Word-Formation as "[resting] on rather thin and arbitrary data".

[6] In contrast, Dieter Kastovsky praised English Word-Formation as the best introduction of the English word-formation at the time, praising it as an "extensive and critical survey of the state of the art".