Butterfield Jeremy - Fowlers Dictionary of Modern English Usage

Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to Strangers.

mr podsnap in dickenss our mutual friend , 1865

Grammar is like walking. You have to think about it when you start but if you have to go on thinking about it you fall over. It should come as second nature.

alice thomas ellis in the spectator , 1989

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over Windows versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

professor jack lynch, the english language: a users guide , 2007

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law. (Le temps change toute chose; il ny a aucune raison pour que la langue chappe cette loi universelle.)

ferdinand de saussure, course in general linguistics , 1959 ( 1916 )

First (for I detest your ridiculous and most pedantic neologism of firstly).

thomas de quincey , 1847

Comments on hopefully by members of a usage panel, as reported in 1985 :

I have fought this for some years, will fight it till I die. It is barbaric, illiterate, offensive, damnable, and inexcusable.

I dont like chalk squeaking on blackboards either.

Hopefully is useful or it would not be used so universally.

Grounded meaning a withdrawal of privileges is a word I dislike. Its off the television (Roseanne notably) but now in common use. (I just heard it on Emmerdale Farm, where they probably think its dialect.) I would almost prefer gated, deriving from Forties public school stories in Hotspur and Wizard. Other current dislikes: Brits; for starters; sorted; and (when used intransitively) hurting.

alan bennett in london review of books , 4 JAN. 1996

This new, fourth edition of Fowlers Dictionary of Modern English Usage has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect how English speakers the world over use the language now, in the early twenty-first century. It offers detailed, reasoned guidance on thousands of points of grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, style, appropriate word choice, and pronunciation. It presents the facts of disputed or controversial usages and illuminates them with up-to-date examples, thereby enabling readers to make informed choices for themselves about their own usage.

In order to make the book relevant to modern users, my editing has consisted of three major tasks. To take editorial decisions, I have drawn on my observation and knowledge of contemporary usage issues derived from my experience as a teacher, translator, author, and former Editor-in-Chief of dictionaries.

First, the addition of over 250 new entries. These entries discuss words and phrases that have been coined or that have become more widespread since the previous edition. Many of them reflect the staggering changes in the way we communicate: blog, to google, hashtag, homepage, online, phablet, selfie, social media. Many, in contrast, are not new but raise usage or style issues not previously covered: achingly (pretentious? clichd?), ad nauseam (misspelt as -eum), to address (overused?), brainstorming (not, contrary to urban myth, politically incorrect), challenging (meaning exactly what?), epicentre (misused?), the problem is, is, to name just a few.

Some of the new entries also reflect changed attitudes towards (or around as many now say) language dealing with race, gender, disability, sexuality, and so forth: ageism, conjoined twins, the language of disability, Indigenous Australians.

Secondly, I examined each entry to see whether the points raised were still valid. In many cases, naturally, they were. That was particularly true of more straightforward matters such as spelling and alternative plural formsalthough even here some surprises emerged, such as changing conventions for plurals of Latin-derived words ending in -um, which can cause so much head-scratching.

But in less cut-and-dried areas, many of the conventions that applied at the time of the previous edition, nearly twenty years ago, have changed, and I have updated entries accordingly, e.g. between you and I, hopefully, or the much debated use of they, their, etc. after singular noun phrases and pronouns such as every student, everybody, everyone.

Thirdly, I have modernized, where appropriate, the style and tone of voice of entries. Sometimes this involved rephrasing dated or literary wording, or language that is lexicographerspeak; sometimes it meant removing a tone which was socially or linguistically outdated. Most visibly for the reader, because Fowler is a book that has always elucidated points of usage by well-chosen examples, I have carefully selected and added hundreds of examples of words being used in their modern contexts. To do this, I have drawn on a great variety of contemporary British, US, and international sources, ranging from the