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Category Archives: usage guide
The term “usage guide”
Within the Bridging the Unbridgeable project we use the term “usage guide” to describe usage handbooks of manuals like Fowler’s Modern English Usage and many others, as included in our HUGE database. But where does the term come from? I checked … Continue reading
Vulgarities of Speech Corrected
The HUGE database includes as the second usage guide on our list, the anonymous Vulgarities of Speech Corrected. The copy included is the second edition, published in 1829, in London. A search in WorldCat produced an earlier edition from 1826, also … Continue reading
Fowler’s Modern English Usage: new but not New
It was February 1997, and Robert Burchfield’s The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage had been out for three months. Just as the 1st and 2nd editions of the Dictionary of Modern English Usage came to be known as ‘Fowler’, The Economist asked itself whether the … Continue reading
Onto doesn’t exist?
Last week, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade published a post on Simon Heffer’s discussion of into on this blog. In his discussion of into in Strictly English, Heffer mentions a closely related usage item, the use of on to versus onto, of which … Continue reading
Posted in usage features, usage guide
Tagged COHA, HUGE, oed, onto, Simon Heffer, Strictly English
3 Comments
On Heffer’s Strictly English
For the book I’m writing on the usage guide as a genre I’m reading several usage guides. Now it is Simon Heffer’s turn. Strictly English, first published in 2010, I find, is a disturbing book (and I have only got through … Continue reading
Posted in usage guide
Tagged Nigel Wilcockson, Random House, Simon Heffer, Strictly English, Windmill Books
2 Comments
David vs Goliath: Oliver Kamm’s take on English usage
I have to admit that reading usage guides can get somewhat boring. Their authors, most of them prescriptivists and literally old-school, frequently use a similar set of usage problems discussing them in a similar manner and expressing similar attitudes. If … Continue reading
Posted in news, usage guide
Tagged Accidence will happen, Oliver Kamm, stickler, The Pedant, usage guide, usage problems
4 Comments
New in English Today: A Fuss about the Octopus
The March issue of English Today includes the latest feature article from our project in which I discuss the options English has to refer to more than one ‘octopus’ as well as a usage rhyme written on this specific topic. Four … Continue reading
Posted in announcement, news, usage features, usage guide
Tagged acceptability, English Today, plural of 'octopus', usage guides, usage problem, usage rhymes
1 Comment
Her Ladyship’s Guide to the Queen’s English
This is one of the most recent usage guides in our HUGE database, published in 2010. For my book on the usage guide as a genre, I decided to read it from cover to cover, just as David Crystal did with Fowler’s … Continue reading
How careful can you be …
I’m going through the final chapter of Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (2014) to find out how many old chestnuts he discusses in his overview of usage problems. I’m always hoping to find new chestnuts, so we’ll wait and see. Of … Continue reading
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