Simon Heffer - Simply English: An A-Z of Avoidable Errors

Contents

In his best-selling Strictly English Simon Heffer explained how to write and speak our language well. In Simply English he offers an entertaining and supremely useful AZ guide to frequent errors, common misunderstandings and stylistic howlers. What is the difference between amend and emend, between imply and infer, and between uninterested and disinterested? When should one put owing to rather than due to? Why should the temptation to write actually, basically or at this moment in time always be strenuously resisted? How does one use an apostrophe correctly, ensure that one understands what alibi really means, and avoid the perils of the double negative?

With articles on everything from punctuation to tabloid English to adverbs and adjectives, Simply English is the essential companion for anyone who cares about the language and wants to use it correctly.

Simon Heffer was born in 1960. He read English at Cambridge and took a PhD in modern history at that university. His previous books include: Moral Desperado: A Life of Thomas Carlyle, The Reinvention of England, Strictly English, A Short History of Power and High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain. In a career of nearly thirty years in Fleet Street, he has written for and held senior positions on the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.

To Martin Edmunds
Quantam meruit

In 2009 Nigel Wilcockson of Random House asked me to write a book on correct grammar and the use of English, and why they matter. He had been alerted to some emails circulating on the Internet that I had written to colleagues at the Daily Telegraph, for which I then worked as Associate Editor, drawing attention to mistakes they had made in their copy, to the annoyance of the papers readers. The result, Strictly English, appeared the following year. It dealt thematically with the main issues in written and spoken English, and its aim was to improve the writing style of anyone who read it closely and carefully.

This book is a much expanded variant of that work. In an A to Z format, it seeks to act as a dictionary-style reference book for those with specific questions about the use of English. Simply English does not supersede Strictly English: it complements it. Although there is some common material, Simply English itemises what Strictly English, in an extended essay, explains at length and more. One should illuminate the other. Perhaps someone wishes to know the difference between perpetrate and perpetuate; or how to use anticipate correctly; or how to avoid misusing prevaricate; or when to deploy an adverb; or how to write to a bishop; or what a subjunctive is and when to unleash one; or what an accusative is. The answers to these, and many other questions, will be found in this book, and can be easily located under their respective entries in the alphabetical format. A word or phrase printed in small in an individual entry signifies that that word or phrase has its own entry.

However, the book is not simply Strictly English placed in alphabetical order. This is because in the four years between writing the two books I and Mr Wilcockson noticed many new solecisms and catachreses whether in print or in speech. Also, many people who had read Strictly English were kind enough to write to me some in great detail about their own irritations with the abuse of English, and alerted me to horrors of which I had hitherto been unaware, or insufficiently aware. I am very grateful to them. As a consequence, this A to Z is a more extensive, heavily revised alphabetical version of Strictly English. I am far from sure that every act of violence done to the English language is recorded in the pages that follow; but the most frequent and the most likely are, as are the means of avoiding them, and many more than were recorded in the original work.

Since Strictly English was published it has spawned other such books, whose relative merits it is hardly my place to judge. This, like the considerable sales of Strictly English in both hard and soft covers, indicated some interesting points about those who speak English. First, a very large number of people feel they were taught the language inadequately, and that after decades of speaking and writing it would like to have a more precise idea of what they are doing, and whether they are doing it correctly. Second, as I suggested in Strictly English, many people feel that for better or worse we live in a society where we may be judged not by how we sound when we speak accents are irrelevant but by how well we put a sentence together grammatically, and how careful our choice of words is. Third, they feel that acquiring such a skill is useful not just for them, but for those still passing through a schools system that does not always place a premium upon the teaching of correct English in, shall we say, the way that the French school system puts one upon the teaching of correct French. (I had a French teacher who was a native speaker, and who rebuked me severely for not deploying a subjunctive when the context demanded it, as any child in a French school would be expected to do.) Fourth, to judge from the number of books on English usage now in print, the public also finds the subject of what words really mean and how grammar should be used rather fascinating which it is or people at least want to take a second opinion on the matter.

When Strictly English was reviewed the responses fell into two camps. Professional writers, who from a tradesmans point of view saw exactly what I sought to achieve, noticed the book with flattering respect. However, when academics in linguistics departments of certain universities reviewed it there was outrage. Nowhere in Britain operates closed shops in the way that academia does, and some of these people were manifestly upset that a mere professional writer should enter this field. In addition to the impenetrable and often specious scholarly papers some academics publish on their subject, they moonlight as writers of supposedly popular works in which they patronise the public about aspects of the English language; I suspect they have been deeply annoyed by the rash of rather more practical books on the subject that started with Strictly English and was followed by a small torrent of other such works by people they would regard as amateurs. They were, to judge from some of the reviews, especially upset that the book took a prescriptive view, because they appear to have deep political views on this matter. For many of them and I paraphrase only slightly I was interfering with the right of self-expression by individuals that is part of the organic growth and change of our language. I am afraid I violently disagreed with them on several counts, and I still do.

It is all very well to tell a young person that he or she can be creative with the English language, while academic linguists sit back and revel in the patois that results. However, if that young person applies for a job, or writes a personal statement when seeking a place in higher education (other, perhaps, than in a linguistics department), he or she may well suffer consequences from being partly illiterate, whether because of poor spelling, poor grammar or a misunderstanding of what a simple monosyllable such as flaunt