A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
Type
Book
Authors
ISBN 10
0198691157
ISBN 13
9780198691150
Category
English Language
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Publication Year
1987
Publisher
Pages
725
Tags
Description
In essentials, Fowler's Modern English Usage can never be out of date, for his primary concern was to teach clear thinking and the orderly use of precise words, and to castigate whatever is slovenly, pretentious, or pedantic. But the conventions of grammar and vocabulary that he called "usage" never stand still, and it is now over forty years since he wrote. Constructions condemned as offensive or improper have forced their way into idiom; "slipshod extensions" have won a respected place in our vocabulary; "vogue words" have fallen out of fashion and others have taken their places; "popularized technicalities" have proliferated.
The alterations and additions made in this revision represent an attempt to do what we may suppose Fowler himself would have wished to do, if he had been alive today, to keep his book abreast of present-day usage. The publication in the meantime of other Oxford works of reference has made it possible to find room for new material by omitting a number of articles that Fowler put in merely for definition. There are also many new comparisons between British and American usage and pronunciation.
Sir Ernest Gowers was for many years a distinguished British civil servant, then chairman of various official bodies, dealing with subjects as diverse as the nationalization of coal deposits, the admission of women into the Foreign Service, conditions of work in shops and offices, foot-and-mouth disease, the preservation of historic houses, and capital punishment. This last experience made him a convinced abolitionist, and he wrote a book, A Life for a Life? explaining why.
He crusaded for the use of good English, and against the use of jargon and "officialese," in letters, reports, and other papers written by Government servants. in 1948 he published Plain Words; A Guide to the Use of English. His ABC of Plain Words followed in 1951, and three years later the two books were published together, under the title of The Complete Plain Words. He was also the author of HW Fowler: The Man and his Teaching.
Sir Ernest Gowers, who was knighted in 1928, died in 1966.
Taken from the inside flaps.
The alterations and additions made in this revision represent an attempt to do what we may suppose Fowler himself would have wished to do, if he had been alive today, to keep his book abreast of present-day usage. The publication in the meantime of other Oxford works of reference has made it possible to find room for new material by omitting a number of articles that Fowler put in merely for definition. There are also many new comparisons between British and American usage and pronunciation.
Sir Ernest Gowers was for many years a distinguished British civil servant, then chairman of various official bodies, dealing with subjects as diverse as the nationalization of coal deposits, the admission of women into the Foreign Service, conditions of work in shops and offices, foot-and-mouth disease, the preservation of historic houses, and capital punishment. This last experience made him a convinced abolitionist, and he wrote a book, A Life for a Life? explaining why.
He crusaded for the use of good English, and against the use of jargon and "officialese," in letters, reports, and other papers written by Government servants. in 1948 he published Plain Words; A Guide to the Use of English. His ABC of Plain Words followed in 1951, and three years later the two books were published together, under the title of The Complete Plain Words. He was also the author of HW Fowler: The Man and his Teaching.
Sir Ernest Gowers, who was knighted in 1928, died in 1966.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Number of Copies
1
