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Category Archives: usage guide
Hoary witticisms and other prescriptivist jokes
In going through our usage guides, we occasionally come across linguistic jokes – not terribly funny, admittedly, but they apparently appeal to writers on usage. And they have done so from the earliest days of the usage guide tradition onwards, … Continue reading
Posted in usage guide
Tagged flat adverbs, Vizetelly, Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
1 Comment
Taggart vs. Pinker: and the winner is …
I’d really like to be able to find out how well “our” usage guides, those in the HUGE database that is, have been selling over the years. This is confidential information, I was recently told by the firm handling the estate of … Continue reading
Early usage guide writer a talkshow host
Hardly any news if the information can be readily found on the Internet, but for me it was: Bergen Evans (1904-1978), the author of A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957) together with his sister Cornelia , hosted a talkshow on language. I … Continue reading
Who is Kay Sayce? Who is Ann Batko?
I’m trying to find out who Kay Sayce is. I know she (he?) is the author of a usage guide called What not to write: A guide to the dos and dont’s of good English (2006). The book is included … Continue reading
Bryson in Hungary and China
WorldCat is a wonderful resource for our kind of work (though not always entirely reliable …). I looked up Bryson’s Troublesome Words (1984), one of “our” usage guides, to find out how popular the book was. I was trying to follow … Continue reading
Jack Lynch on (correct) usage
Reading Jack Lynch’s The Lexicographer’s Dilemma (2009), I (re)discovered his usage guide, called The English Language: A User’s Guide, originally published in 2008. I then also found his very useful alphabetically arranged website (called Guide to Grammar and Style), filled with usage advice: … Continue reading
How many English usage guides are there?
This is an important question in the context of this project, but it will be one that I have come to decide is impossible to answer. Unfortunately, and (perhaps, for some) frustratingly so. One important tool (or so I thought originally) … Continue reading
Question for Bryan Garner
Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage contains a lengthy list of works dealing with English usage, studies as well as usage guides. Very useful for our project! There is one item which I can’t quite classify offhand as belonging to either … Continue reading
Rosaline Masson: first female (British) usage guide writer?
Our list of usage guides, which we drew up as a basis for the HUGE database, includes various female authors, and more of them the further we get to modern times. The first woman on our list is Rosaline Masson, whose Use … Continue reading
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