Non.com FAQ Mirrors
Prev: alt-sources-intro
Next: amstrad8bit-faq
Alt.usage.english FAQ
THE ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH FAQ FILE
by Mark Israel
misrael@scripps.edu
Last updated: 2 October 1996
New entries this month:
"near miss"
"fall off a turnip truck"
grass strip between road and sidewalk
Does the next millennium begin in 2000 or 2001?
What will we call the next decade?
etymologies of personal names
Fumblerules ("Don't use no double negatives", etc.)
English is Tough Stuff
provenance of English vocabulary
I before E except after C
0. Yes, I know that this file is too big for some newsreaders. If
you are cursed with such a newsreader, you can ftp this file from
"rtfm.mit.edu", directory "pub/usenet/alt.usage.english", file
"alt.usage.english_FAQ". (It's also on the World Wide Web:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/alt-usage-english-faq/faq.html
Or you can send me (misrael@scripps.edu) e-mail and I'll send it
to you in pieces. Sorry for the inconvenience, but there are
more of us who appreciate the convenience of a single file.
1. Please send suggestions/flames/praise to me by e-mail rather than
post them to the newsgroup. The purpose of an FAQ file is to
reduce traffic, not increase it.
2. This is in no sense an "official" FAQ file. Feel free to start
your own. I certainly can't stop you.
3. Please don't expect me to add a topic unless (a) you're willing
to contribute the entry for that topic; (b) the topic has come up
at least twice in the newsgroup, *or* the entry gives information
that cannot readily be found elsewhere; and (c) if the topic has
been controversial in the newsgroup, your entry attempts to
represent conflicting points of view. Thanks to all who *have*
contributed!
Table of Contents
-----------------
Welcome to alt.usage.english!
guidelines for posting
related newsgroups
recommended books
dictionaries
online dictionaries
general reference
grammars
books on linguistics
books on usage
online usage guides
online language columns
books that discriminate synonyms
style manuals
books on mathematical exposition
books on phrasal verbs
books on phrase origins
books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc.
books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language
books on group names
books on rhyming slang
artificial dialects
Basic English
E-prime
pronunciation
how to represent pronunciation in ASCII
rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r"
How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
words pronounced differently according to context
words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation
usage disputes
"acronym"
"all ... not"
"alot"
"alright"
"between you and I"
"company is" vs "company are"
"could care less"
"could of"
"different to", "different than"
"done"="finished"
double "is"
"due to"
"functionality"
gender-neutral pronouns
"hopefully", "thankfully"
"impact"="to affect"
"It needs cleaned"
"It's me" vs "it is I"
"less" vs "fewer"
"like" vs "as"
"like" vs "such as"
"more/most/very unique"
"near miss"
"none is" vs "none are"
plurals
plurals of Latin and Greek words
plurals => English singulars
preposition at end
"quality"
repeated words after abbreviations
"Scotch"
"shall" vs "will", "would" vs "should"
split infinitive
"that" vs "which"
"that kind of a thing"
the the hoi polloi debate
"true fact"
"whom"
"you saying" vs "your saying"
punctuation
"." after abbreviations
," vs ",
"A, B and C" vs "A, B, and C"
foreigners' FAQs
"a"/"an" before abbreviations
"A number of..."
when to use "the"
subjunctive
word origins
"A.D."
"alumin(i)um"
"bloody"
"bug"="defect"
"Caesarean section"
"canola"
"catch-22"
"cop"
"copacetic"
"crap"
"eighty-six"="nix"
"Eskimo"
"flammable"
"freeway"
"fuck"
"golf"
"hooker"
"ISO"
"jerry-built"/"jury-rigged"
"kangaroo"
"limerence"
"loo"
"love"="zero"
"merkin"
"nimrod"
"O.K."
"outrage"
"pie-shaped"
"portmanteau word"
"posh"
"quiz"
"Santa Ana"
"scot-free"
"sincere"
"sirloin"/"baron of beef"
"SOS"
"spoonerism"
"till"/"until"
"tip"
"titsling"/"brassiere"
"troll"
"typo"
"Wicca"
"widget"
"wog"
"wonk"
"wop"
"ye"="the"
phrase origins
"the bee's knees"
"beg the question"
"blue moon"
"Bob's your uncle"
"to call a spade a spade"
"cut to the chase"
"The die is cast"
"dressed to the nines"
"Elementary, my dear Watson!"
"Enquiring minds want to know"
"The exception proves the rule"
"face the music"
"fall off a turnip truck"
"Get the lead out"
"Go figure"
"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata)
"go to hell in a handbasket"
"hell for leather"
"hoist with his own petard"
"by hook or by crook"
"Illegitimis non carborundum"
"in like Flynn"
"Let them eat cake"
"mind your p's and q's"
"more honoured in the breach than the observance"
"more than you can shake a stick at"
"peter out"
"politically correct"
"push the envelope"
"put in one's two cents' worth"
"rule of thumb"
"shouting fire in a crowded theater"
"son of a gun"
"spitting image"/"spit and image"
"There's a sucker born every minute"
"to all intents and purposes"
"wait for the other shoe to drop"
"Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
"whole cloth"
"the whole nine yards"
"You have another think coming"
words frequently sought
words ending in "-gry"
list of language terms
"I won't mention..."
names of "&", "@", and "#"
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
"Take the prisoner downstairs", said Tom condescendingly.
What is the opposite of "to exceed"?
What is the opposite of "distaff side"?
grass strip between road and sidewalk
miscellany
What is a suggested format for citing online sources?
Does the next millennium begin in 2000 or 2001?
What will we call the next decade?
etymologies of personal names
Fumblerules ("Don't use no double negatives", etc.)
English is Tough Stuff
What is the phone number of the Grammar Hotline?
deliberate mistakes in dictionaries
How did "Truly" become a personal name?
trademarks
commonest words
Why do we say "30 years old" but "a 30-year-old man"?
What words are their own antonym?
sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English
radio alphabets
distribution of English-speakers
provenance of English vocabulary
"billion": a U.K. view
Biblical sense of "to know"
postfix "not"
origin of the dollar sign
spelling
spelling reform
What is "ghoti"?
I before E except after C
How do you spell "e-mail"?
Why is "I" capitalized?
diacritics
"-er" vs "-re"
"-ize" vs "-ise"
possessive apostrophes
====================================================================
WELCOME TO ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH!
alt.usage.english is a newsgroup where we discuss the English
language (and also occasionally other languages). We discuss
how particular words, phrases, and syntactic forms are used; how
they originated; and where in the English-speaking world they're
prevalent. (All this is called "description".) We also discuss
how we think they *should* be used ("prescription").
alt.usage.english is for everyone, *not* only for linguists,
native speakers, or descriptivists.
Guidelines for posting
----------------------
Things you may want to consider avoiding when posting here:
(1) re-opening topics (such as singular "they" and "hopefully") that
experience has shown lead to circular debate. (One function of the
FAQ file is to point out topics that have already been discussed ad
nauseam.)
(2) questions that can be answered by simple reference to a
dictionary.
(3) generalities. If you make a statement like: "Here in the U.S.
we NEVER say 'different to'", "Retroflex 'r' is ONLY used in North
America", or "'Eh' ALWAYS rhymes with 'pay'", chances are that
someone will pounce on you with a counterexample.
(4) assertions that one variety of English is "true English".
(5) sloppy writing (as distinct from simple slips like typing
errors, or errors from someone whose native language is not
English). Keep in mind that the regulars on alt.usage.english are
probably less willing than the general population to suffer sloppy
writers gladly; and that each article is written by one person, but
read perhaps by thousands, so the convenience of the readers really
ought to have priority over the convenience of the writer. Again,
this is *not* to discourage non-native speakers from posting;
readers will be able to detect that you're writing in a foreign
language, and will make allowances for this.
(6) expressions of exasperation. In the course of debate, you
may encounter positions based on premises radically different
from yours and perhaps surprisingly novel to you. Saying things
like "Oh, please", "That's absurd", "Give me a break", or "Go
teach your grandmother to suck eggs, my man" is unlikely to win
your opponent over.
You really *are* welcome to post here! Don't let the impatient
tone of this FAQ frighten you off.
Related newsgroups
------------------
There are other newsgroups that also discuss the English
language. bit.listserv.words-l (which is a redistribution of a
BITNET mailing list -- not all machines on Usenet carry these) is
also billed as being for "English language discussion", but its
participants engage in a lot more socializing and general chitchat
than we do.
There is a mailing list for copy-editors. To subscribe, send
e-mail with the text "SUBSCRIBE COPYEDITING-L Your Name" to
listproc@cornell.edu .
sci.lang is where most of the professional linguists hang out.
Discussions tend to be about linguistic methodology (rather than
about *particular* words and phrases), and prescription is severely
frowned upon there. Newbies post many things there that would
better be posted here.
alt.flame.spelling (which fewer sites carry than carry
alt.usage.english) is the place to criticize other people's
spelling. We try to avoid doing that here (although some of us do
get provoked if you spell language terms wrong. It's "consensus",
not "concensus"; "diphthong", not "dipthong"; "grammar", not
"grammer"; "guttural", not "gutteral"; and "pronunciation", not
"pronounciation").
alt.usage.english.neologism is described as being for
"meaningless words coined by psychotics". Fewer sites carry it,
and it gets little traffic; the people who do post to it are
generally not negative about neologisms.
rec.puzzles is a better place than here to ask questions like
"What English words end in '-gry' or '-endous'?", "What words
contain 'vv'?", "What words have 'e' pronounced as /I/?", "What Pig
Latin words are also words?", or "How do you punctuate 'John where
Bill had had had had had had had had had had had the approval of the
teacher' or 'That that is is that that is not is not that that is
not is not that that is is that it it is' to get comprehensible
text?" But, before you post such a question there, make sure it's
not answered in the rec.puzzles archive, available by anonymous ftp
from rtfm.mit.edu; the relevant section is in the directory
pub/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/archive/language . The "-gry"
answer is now also to be found further below here in this FAQ.
Wordplay for its own sake (anagrams, palindromes, etc.) belongs
in alt.anagrams. There are also long lists of such things in the
rec.puzzles archive.
misc.education.language.english is a newsgroup devoted to the
teaching of English (especially as a second language).
comp.edu.languages.natural is devoted to software for assisting
language instruction.
misc.writing is devoted to writing, and especially to the
concerns of people trying to establish themselves as professional
writers.
alt.quotations is the place to ask about origins of quotations
(although there is no firm dividing line between those and phrase
origins, which belong here). You can access the 1901 edition of
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations at:
<http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/>
Language features peculiar to the U.K. get discussed in
soc.culture.british as well as here. Before posting to either
newsgroup on this subject, you should look at Jeremy Smith's
British-American dictionary, available on the WWW at:
<http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html>
If you have a (language-related or other) peeve that you want
to mention but don't particularly want to justify, you can try
alt.peeves. ("What is your pet peeve?" is *not* a frequently asked
question in alt.usage.english, although we frequently get
unsolicited answers to it. If you're new to this group, chances are
excellent that your particular pet peeve is something that has
already been discussed to death by the regulars.)
If you're interested in the peculiarities of language as used by
computer users, get the Jargon File, by anonymous ftp from
prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38) under pub/gnu, or on the WWW:
<http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon.html>
(also available in paperback form as _The New Hacker's Dictionary_,
ed. Eric S. Raymond, 2nd edition, MIT Press, 1993, ISBN
0-262-68079-3; the 3rd edition is due to be published in October
1996, ISBN ISBN 0-262-68092-0). You can discuss hacker language
further in the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers, or in the moderated
newsgroup comp.society.folklore .
Two newsgroups that don't deal with the English language but
that people often need directing to are: sci.classics, for
questions about Latin and ancient Greek; and comp.fonts, for
questions about typography.
====================================================================
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
-----------------
Dictionaries
------------
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd ed. (OED2) (Oxford
University Press, 1989, 20 vols.; compact edition, 1991 ISBN
0-19-861258-3; additions series, 2 vols., 1993, ISBN 0-19-861292-3
and 0-19-861299-0), has no rivals as a historical dictionary of the
English language. It is too large for the editors to keep all of
it up to date, and hence should not be relied on for precise
definitions of technical terms, or for consistent usage labels.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Merriam-Webster,
1961, ISBN 0-87779-201-1) (W3) is the unabridged dictionary to check
for 20th-century U.S. citations of word use, and for precise
definitions of technical terms too rare to appear in college
dictionaries. People sometimes cite W3 with a later date. These
later dates refer to the addenda section at the front, *not* to the
body of the dictionary, which is unchanged since 1961. W3 was
widely criticized by schoolteachers and others for its lack of usage
labels; e.g., it gives "imply" as one of the meanings of "infer" and
"flout" as one of the meanings of "flaunt", without indicating that
these are disputed usage. Others have defended the lack of usage
labels. An anthology devoted to the controversy is _Dictionaries
and THAT Dictionary: A Case Book of the Aims of Lexicographers and
the Targets of Reviewers_, ed. James Sledd and Wilma R. Ebbitt
(Scott Foresman, 1962). Merriam-Webster is working on a 4th edition,
but it is several years away from completion.
Please don't refer to any dictionary simply as "Webster's".
_Books in Print_ has 5 columns of book titles beginning with
"Webster's"!
One-volume 8" x 10" dictionaries are popularly known as "collegiate
dictionaries", but they should be called "college dictionaries" or
"quarto dictionaries", since "Collegiate" is a trademark of Merriam-
Webster. The college dictionary most frequently cited here is
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (Merriam-
Webster, 1993, ISBN 0-87779-707-2) (MWCD10). Merriam-Webster
publishes sub-editions of its Collegiate dictionaries, so look at
the copyright date to see exactly what you have. The most
comprehensive British college dictionary is Collins English
Dictionary (3rd edition, HarperCollins, updated 1994, ISBN
0-00-470678-1). The Chambers Dictionary (Larousse, 1993, ISBN
0-550-10255-8) is a respected British dictionary now also
available on CD-ROM.
If you're interested in etymology, get The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language (3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin,
1992, ISBN 0-395-44895-6) (AHD3) or Webster's New World College
Dictionary (3rd edition, Macmillan, 1996, ISBN 0-02-860333-8).
These are two of the few dictionaries that trace words back to their
reconstructed Indo-European (Aryan) roots. AHD3 is particularly
useful because it lists the etyma all together in an appendix.
Because the appendix was pared in the third edition, _The American
Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots_, by Calvert Watkins
(Houghton Mifflin, 1985), although out of print, is not obsolete.
Although AHD3 looks larger than a college dictionary, its word
count puts it in the college range. If you want an up-to-date
dictionary that is larger than a college dictionary, get the Random
House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd edition, Random House, revised
1993, ISBN 0-679-42917-4) (RHUD2).
Online dictionaries
-------------------
You *cannot* access the OED online, unless you or your
institution has paid to do so. The second edition is copyright, and
allowing public access to it would be *illegal*. A public-access
version of the first edition is conceivable, but I don't know of
one.
The OED is available on CD-ROM for PCs, and server-style for UNIX
systems. For info on obtaining the UNIX version in North America,
phone the Open Text Corporation in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada:
e-mail "info@opentext.com". Don't ask us where to buy the CD-ROM
version: your local bookshop can order it for you. If you want to
submit citations for the next edition of the OED, you can contact
the OED staff directly at "oed3@oup.co.uk".
Info from Alex Lange: The online OED is encoded with the
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which is ISO 8879:1986
and is discussed in obscure detail on the comp.text.sgml newsgroup.
The funny-looking escape codes beginning with "&" are known as "text
entity references". The ISO has defined a slew of such for use with
SGML: publishing symbols, math and scientific symbols, and so on.
A good place to start for information about SGML and its uses is an
article "SGML Frees Information", Byte, June 1992.
Merriam-Webster's MWCD10 is publicly accessible at
<http://www.m-w.com>. Any "Webster" dictionary that you find
anywhere else on the Net is probably an out-of-date bootleg.
Info from Graham Toal: Roget's Thesaurus (1911 version, out of
copyright) is available from:
<ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext91/roget13.txt>
The Oxford Text Archive at:
<ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/ota/public/dicts/1054>
has Collins English Dictionary (1st edition) converted to a Prolog
fact base; the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary; and the MRC
Psycholinguistic Database (150,837 word forms, expanded from the
headwords in the Shorter Oxford, with info about 26 different
linguistic properties). Read the conditions of use for the Oxford
Text Archive materials before using; most texts are available for
scholarly use and research only.
Anu Garg (agarg@ces.cwru.edu) runs a public-access wordserver
that provides dictionary, thesaurus, acronym, and anagram services
by e-mail. He also has a mailing list, "A.Word.A.Day", that mails
out a vocabulary word and its definition to its subscribers every
day. For information on these services, send a blank message with
subject "Help" to "wsmith@wordsmith.org". Merriam-Webster also
posts a Word of the Day at <http://www-lj.eb.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl>;
this is not yet available by e-mail.
General reference
-----------------
_The Oxford Companion to the English Language_ (ed. Tom McArthur,
Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-214183-X) is an
encyclopaedia with a wealth of information on various dialects, on
lexicography, and almost everything else except individual words
and expressions. _Success With Words_ (Reader's Digest, 1983, ISBN
0-88850-117-X) is especially suitable for beginners.
Books on linguistics
--------------------
David Crystal _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_ Cambridge
University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-26438-3
David Crystal _A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics_
Blackwell, 1985, ISBN 0-631-14081-6
William Bright, ed. _International Encyclopedia of Linguistics_
4 vols., Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-505196-3
R. E. Asher, ed. _The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics_
10 vols., Pergamon, 1994, ISBN 0-08-035943-4
Grammars
--------
Randolph Quirk et al. _A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language_ Longman, 1985, ISBN 0-582-51734-6
Otto Jespersen _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_
7 volumes, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1909-1949
Books on usage
--------------
The best survey of the history of usage disputes and how
they correlate with actual usage is Webster's Dictionary of English
Usage, Merriam-Webster, 1989 (WDEU -- recently reprinted as
_Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_, ISBN
0-87779-131-7).
Among conservative prescriptivists, the most highly respected
usage book is the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W.
Fowler -- 1st edition, 1926 (MEU); 2nd edition, revised by Sir
Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1965, ISBN 0-19-281389-7
(MEU2). Oxford University Press has announced that a 3rd edition,
edited by Robert Burchfield (who edited the OED supplement) will be
published in November 1996, ISBN 0-19-869126-2. An independent
revision by the late Sir Kingsley Amis is also due to be published
this year.
_The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White
(Macmillan, 3rd ed. 1979, ISBN 0-02-418190-0) and Wilson Follett's
_Modern American Usage_ (Hill and Wang, 1966, ISBN 0-8090-0139-X)
have their partisans here, although they aren't as *widely*
respected as Fowler.
Liberals most often refer to the Dictionary of Contemporary
American Usage, by Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans (Random House,
1957, ISBN 0-8022-0973-4 -- out of print).
Online usage guides
-------------------
Jack Lynch (jlynch@english.upenn.edu) has a style guide that he
originally wrote for business writers and modified for an English
Literature course that he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania:
<http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/grammar.html>
Some topics that some people expect to be covered in this FAQ file,
such as "affect" vs "effect", "compose" vs "comprise", and "i.e." vs
"e.g.", actually belong in a list of things that writers need to be
cautioned about; you'll find them in Jack's guide.
A more comprehensive, but more simple-minded, guide, by the
English Department of the University of Victoria, Canada, is at:
<http://webserver.maclab.comp.uvic.ca/writersguide/Word/DictionUsageToc.hmtl>
Bill Walsh, copy desk chief of the Washington Times, has a
"Curmudgeon's Stylebook" at <http://www.theslot.com/>.
Project Bartleby at Columbia has an incomplete copy of the 1918
edition of Strunk's book _The Elements of Style_ (before White got
to it), with some simple hypertext markup:
<http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk/>
It also has the second edition of _The King's English_ by H. W.
Fowler and F. G. Fowler (1907):
<http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/fowler/>
There is an "anti-grammar" at:
<http://www.unl.edu/mama/grammar/MAMAhot100.htm>
Online language columns
-----------------------
Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at Random House Dictionary Dept.,
posts a "Word of the Day" column (articles cover all kinds of
English-language topics, not just vocabulary building) at:
<http://www.randomhouse.com/jesse>
Evan Morris (words1@interport.net) posts his syndicated newspaper
column, "Words, Wit, and Wisdom":
<http://www.interport.net/~words1>
Richard Lederer's column "Verbivore" appears in the online
magazine Salon:
<http://www.salon1999.com/>
See also Richard Lederer's home page at:
<http://www.tiac.net/users/rlederer>
which has many useful links.
Terry O'Connor (toconnor@peg.apc.org) posts "Word for Word", his
column in the Queensland newspaper The Courier-Mail:
<http://peg.pegasus.oz.au/~toconnor/>
Collins Cobuild offers a column called WordWatch:
<http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/wordwatch.html>
The OED posts its newsletters:
<http://www.oup.co.uk/newoed>
The Editorial Eye posts many of its articles:
<http://www.eei-alex.com/eye/>
Michael Quinion adds a neologism a week in his World Wide Words:
<http://clever.net/quinion/words/>
De Proverbio, an electronic journal of international proverb
studies, is at:
<http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/flonta>
Books that discriminate synonyms
_Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms_ Merriam-Webster, 1984,
ISBN 0-87779-241-0
Style manuals
-------------
_The Chicago Manual of Style_ (University of Chicago Press,
1993, ISBN 0-226-10389-7) covers manuscript preparation; copy-
editing; proofs; rights and permissions; typography; and format
of tables, captions, bibliographies, and indexes.
Book on mathematical exposition
Norman E. Steenrod, Paul R. Halmos, Menahem M. Schiffer, Jean A.
Dieudonne _How to Write Mathematics_ American Mathematical
Society, 1973, ISBN 0-8218-0055-8
Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, & Paul M. Roberts _Mathematical
Writing_ Mathematical Association of America, 1989, ISBN
0-88385-063-X
Books on phrasal verbs
----------------------
A. P. Cowie and Ronald Mackin _Oxford Dictionary of Current
Idiomatic English: Verbs with Prepositions and Particles, Vol. I_
OUP, 1975, ISBN 0-19-431145-7
Rosemary Courtney _Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs_ Longman,
1983, ISBN 0-582-55530-2
F. T. Wood _English Verbal Idioms_ London: Macmillan, 1966,
ISBN 0-333-09673-8
F. T. Wood _English Prepositional Idioms_ London: Macmillan, 1969,
ISBN 0-333-10391-2
Books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc.
There are many *hundreds* of differences between British and
American English. From time to time, we get threads in which
each post mentions *one* of these differences. Because such a
thread can go on for ever, it's helpful to delimit the topic
more narrowly.
The books to get are _The Hutchinson British/American Dictionary_
by Norman Moss (Arrow, 1990, ISBN 0-09-978230-8); _British English,
A to Zed_ by Norman W. Schur (Facts on File, 1987, ISBN
0-8160-1635-6); and _Modern American Usage_ by H. W. Horwill
(OUP, 2nd ed., 1935).
Jeremy Smith (jeremy@peak.org) has compiled his own
British-American dictionary, available on the WWW at
<http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dict.html>. He plans to
publish it as a paperback. There is another British-American
dictionary, maintained by Mark Horn (ttwy08a@prodigy.com), at
<http://pages.prodigy.com/NY/NYC/britspk/main.html>.
For Australian English, see _The Macquarie Dictionary of
Australian Colloquial Language_ (Macquarie, 1988,
ISBN 0-949757-41-1); _The Macquarie Dictionary_ (Macquarie, 1991,
ISBN 0-949757-63-2); _The Australian National Dictionary_ (Oxford
University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-55736-5); or _The Dinkum
Dictionary_ (Viking O'Nell, 1988, ISBN 0-670-90419-8).
For New Zealand English, there's the _Heinemann New Zealand
Dictionary_, ed. H. W. Orseman (Heinemann, 1979, ISBN
0-86863-373-9); and _A Personal Kiwi-Yankee Slanguage Dictionary_,
by Louis S. Leland Jr. (McIndoe, 1987, ISBN 0-86868-001-X).
For South African English, see _A Dictionary of South African
English_, ed. Jean Branford (OUP, 3rd ed., 1987, ISBN
0-19-570427-4).
For Canadian English, see _A Dictionary of Canadianisms on
Historical Principles_ (Gage, 1967, ISBN 0-7715-1976-1); the
_Penguin Canadian Dictionary_ (Copp, 1990, ISBN 0-670-81970-0); or
the _Gage Canadian Dictionary_ (Gage, 1982, ISBN 0-7715-9660-X).
For Irish English, see Padiac O'Farrell's _How the Irish speak
English (Mercier, 1993, ISBN 1-85635-055-X); Patrick W. Joyce's
_English as We Speak it in Ireland_ (Wolfhound, 2nd ed., 1987, ISBN
0-86327-122-7); Loreto Todd's _Words Apart: A Dictionary of
Northern Ireland English_ (C.Smythe, 1990, 0-86140-338-X); or Niklas
Miller's _Irish-English, English-Irish Dictionary_ (Abson, 1982,
ISBN 0-902920-11-1).
A "Scots Leid Haunbuik an FAQ" is available at
<ftp://jpd.ch.man.ac.uk/pub/Scots/ScotsFAQ.txt>.
For English in India, see Ivor Lewis's _Sahibs, Nabobs and
Boxwallahs: A Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-Indian_ (OUP, 1991,
ISBN 0-19-562582-X).
Books on phrase origins
-----------------------
Be warned that every book on phrase origins so far published
has etymologies that are more speculative and less rigorous than
those in general dictionaries.
Christine Ammer _Have a Nice Day -- No Problem! : A Dictionary of
Cliches_ Plume Penguin, 1992, ISBN 0-452-27004-9
Robert Hendrickson _The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins_ Facts on File, 1987, ISBN 0-86237-122-7 (The
paperback reprint, _The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase
Origins_, is no longer available.)
Nigel Rees _Bloomsbury Dictionary of Phrase and Allusion_
Bloomsbury, 1991, ISBN 0-7475-1217-5
Ivor H. Evans, ed. _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_
14th ed., Harper & Row, 1989, ISBN 0-304-31835-3
Charles Earle Funk _2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings, and
Expressions from White Elephants to Song & Dance_ (an omnibus of
four earlier books, 1948-58) Galahad, 1993, ISBN 0-88365-845-3
Books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language
Rosalie Maggio _The Bias-Free Word Finder: A Dictionary of
Nondiscriminatory Language_ Beacon, 1992, ISBN 0-8070-6003-8
Nigel Rees _The Politically Correct Phrasebook: What They
Say You Can and Cannot Say in the 1990s_ Bloomsbury, 1993,
ISBN 0-7475-1426-7
Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf _The Official Politically
Correct Dictionary and Handbook_ Villard, 1993, ISBN
0-679-74944-6
Books on group names
--------------------
James Lipton _An Exaltation of Larks_ Viking Penguin, 1991,
ISBN 0-670-3044-6
Ivan G. Sparkes _Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms_
Gale, 2nd ed, 1985, ISBN 0-8103-2188-2
Rex Collins _A Crash of Rhinoceroses: A Dictionary of Collective
Nouns_ Moger Bell, 1993, ISBN 1-55921-096-6
There's an online collection at <http://www.lrcs.com/collectives>.
Books on rhyming slang
----------------------
Julian Franklyn _A Dictionary of Rhyming Slang_ 3rd ed.,
Routledge, 1990, ISBN 0-415-04602-5
Paul Wheeler _Upper Class Rhyming Slang_ Sidgwick & Jackson,
1985, ISBN 0-283-99295-6
John Meredith _Dinkum Aussie Rhyming Slang_ Kangaroo, 1991,
ISBN 0-86417-333-4
====================================================================
ARTIFICIAL DIALECTS
-------------------
Basic English
-------------
Basic English (where "Basic" stands for "British American
Scientific International Commercial") is a subset of English with
a base vocabulary of 850 words, propounded by C. K. Ogden in 1929.
Look under "Ogden" in your library's author index if you're
interested. (We're not.)
E-prime
-------
E-prime is a subset of standard idiomatic English that eschews
all forms of the verb "to be" (e.g., you can't say "You are an ass"
or "You an ass", but you can say "You act like an ass"). The
original reference is D. David Bourland, Jr., "A linguistic note:
write in E-prime" _General Semantics Bulletin_, 1965/1966, 32 and
33, 60-61. Albert Ellis wrote a book in E-prime (_Sex and the
Liberated Man_). You can also look at the April 1992 issue of the
_Atlantic_ if you're interested. (We're not.) The following book
contains articles both pro and con on E-Prime: _To Be or Not: An
E-Prime Anthology_, ed. D. David Bourland and Paul D. Johnston,
International Society for General Semantics, 1991, ISBN
0-918970-38-5.
====================================================================
PRONUNCIATION
-------------
How to represent pronunciation in ASCII
Beware of using ad hoc methods to indicate pronunciation. The
problem with ad hoc methods is that they often wrongly assume your
dialect to have certain features in common with the readers'
dialect. You may pronounce "bother" to rhyme with "father"; some of
the readers here don't. You may pronounce "cot" and "caught" alike;
some of the readers here don't. You may pronounce "caught" and
"court" alike; some of the readers here don't.
The standard way to represent pronunciation (used in the latest
British Dictionaries and by linguists worldwide) is the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For a complete guide to
the IPA, see _Phonetic Symbol Guide_ by Geoffrey K. Pullum and
William A. Ladusaw (University of Chicago Press, 1986, ISBN
0-226-68532-2). IPA uses many special symbols; on the Net, where
we're restricted to ASCII symbols, we must find a way to make do.
The following scheme is due to Evan Kirshenbaum
(kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com). The complete scheme can be accessed on
the WWW at:
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/>
I show here only examples for the sounds most often referred to in
this newsgroup. Where there are two columns, the left column shows
British Received Pronunciation (RP), and the right column shows a
rhotic pronunciation used by at least some U.S. speakers. (There's
a WWW page that shows what the IPA symbols look like:
<http://www.unil.ch/ling/phonetique/api2.html>.)
The consonant symbols [b], [d], [f], [h], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p],
[r], [s], [t], [v], [w], and [z] have their usual English values.
[A] = [<script a>] as in:
"ah" /A:/ /A:/
"cart" /kA:t/ /kArt/
"father" /'fA:D@/ /'fA:D@r/
"farther" /'fA:D@/ /'fArD@r/
and French _bas_ /bA/. This sound requires opening your
mouth wide and feeling resonance at the back of your mouth.
[A.] = [<turned script a>] as in British:
"bother" /'bA.D@/
"cot" /kA.t/
"hot" /hA.t/
"sorry" /'sA.rI/
This symbol (for the sound traditionally called "short o")
is not much used to transcribe U.S. pronunciation. [A] or
[O] is used instead, according to which vowels the speaker
merges; but the sound *used* by *many* such speakers will
certainly be *heard* by Britons as [A.]. The sound is
intermediate between [A] and [O], but typically of shorter
duration than either. Imagine Patrick Stewart saying "Tea,
Earl Grey, hot."
[a] as in French _ami_ /a'mi/, German _Mann_ /man/, Italian _pasta_
/'pasta/, Chicago "pop" /pap/, Boston "park" /pa:k/. Also
in diphthongs: "dive" /daIv/ (yes, folks, the sound
traditionally called "long i" is actually a diphthong!),
"out" /aUt/. Typically, [a] is not distinguished
phonemically from [A]; but if you use in "ask" a vowel
distinct both from the one in "cat" and the one in "father",
then [a] is what it is.
[C] = [<c cedilla>] as in German (Hochdeutsch) _ich_ /IC/
[D] = [<edh>] as in "this" /DIs/
[E] = [<epsilon>] as in:
"end" /End/ /End/
"get" /gEt/ /gEt/
"Mary" /'mE@rI/ /'mE@ri/
"merry" /'mErI/ /'mEri/
Some U.S. speakers do not distinguish between "Mary",
"merry", and "marry".
[e] as in:
"eight" /eIt/ /eIt/
"chaos" /'keA.s/ /'keAs/
[g] as in "get" /gEt/
[I] = [<iota>] as in "it" /It/
[I.] = [<small capital y>] as in German _Gl"uck_ /glI.k/.
Round your lips for [U] and try to say [I].
[i] as in "eat" /i:t/
[j] as in "yes" /jEs/
[N] = [<eng>] as in "hang" /h&N/
[O] = [<open o>] as in:
"all" /O:l/ /O:l/
"caught" /kO:t/ /kO:t/
"court" /kO:t/ /kOrt/
"oil" /OIl/ /OIl/
The [O] sound requires rounded lips, but lips making a
a bigger circle than for [o]. If you do not use the
same vowel sound in "caught" as in "court", then you are
one of the North American speakers who use [O] only
before [r]: you do not round your lips for "all" and
"caught", and you should use some other symbol, such as
[A] or [a], to transcribe the vowel.
[o] as in U.S.:
"no" /noU/
"old" /oUld/
"omit" /oU'mIt/
The pure sound is heard in French _beau_ /bo/. British
Received Pronunciation does not use this sound,
substituting the diphthong /@U/ (/n@U/, /@Uld/, /@U'mIt/).
If you are one of the few speakers who distinguish such
pairs as "aural" and "oral", "for" and "four", "for" and
"fore", "horse" and "hoarse", "or" and "oar", "or" and
"ore", then you use [O] for the first and [o] for the
second word in each pair; otherwise, you use [O] for both.
[R] = [<right-hook schwa>], equivalent to /@r/, /r-/, or even /V"r/
[S] = [<esh>] as in "ship" /SIp/
[T] = [<theta>] as in "thin" /TIn/
[t!] = [<turned t>] as in "tsk-tsk" or "tut-tut" /t! t!/
[U] = [<upsilon>] as in "pull" /pUl/
[u] as in "ooze" /u:z/
[V] = [<turned v>] as in British RP:
"hurry" /'hVrI/
"shun" /SVn/
"up" /Vp/
U.S. speakers tend not to use [V] in words (such as "hurry")
where the following sound is [r]: they would say /'h@ri/.
And some U.S. speakers, especially in the eastern U.S.,
substitute [@] for [V] in all contexts. If you do not
distinguish "mention" /'mEn S@n/ from "men shun" /'mEn SVn/,
then you should use [@] and not [V] to transcribe your
speech.
[V"] = [<reversed epsilon>] as in:
"fern" /fV":n/ /fV"rn/
"hurl" /hV":l/ /hV"rl/
Many U.S. speakers substitute [@] for [V"], so they would
say /f@rn/, /h@rl/. Many other U.S. speakers pronounce "fern"
with no vowel at all: /fr:n/, /hr:l/. If you are one of the
few speakers who distinguish such pairs as "pearl" and "purl"
(using a lower, more retracted vowel in "purl"), then you can
transcribe "pearl" /p@rl/ and "purl" /pV"rl/.
[W] = [<o-e ligature>] as in French _heure_ /Wr/, German _K"opfe_
/'kWpf@/. Round your lips for [O] and try to say [E].
[x] as in Scots "loch" /lA.x/, German _Bach_ /bax/
[Y] = [<slashed o>] as in French _peu_ /pY/, German _sch"on_ /SYn/,
Scots "guidwillie" /gYd'wIli/. Round your lips for [o] and
try to say [e].
[y] as in French _lune_ /lyn/, German _m"ude_ /'myd@/. Round your
lips for [u] and try to say [i].
[Z] = [<yogh>] as in "beige" /beIZ/
[&] = [<ash>] as in:
"ash" /&S/ /&S/
"cat" /k&t/ /k&t/
"marry" /'m&rI/ /'m&ri/
[@] = [<schwa>] as in "lemon" /'lEm@n/
[?] = [<glottal>] as in "uh-oh" /V?oU/
[*] = [<fish-hook r>], a short tap of the tongue use by some U.S.
speakers in "pedal", "petal", and by Scots speakers in
"pearl": all /pE*@l/. If you are a U.S. speaker but
distinguish "pedal" from "petal", then you do not use this
sound.
- previous consonant syllabic as in "bundle" /'bVnd@l/ or /'bVndl-/,
"button" /bVt@n/ or /bVtn-/
~ previous sound nasalized
: previous sound lengthened
; previous sound palatalized
<h> previous sound aspirated
' following syllable has primary stress
, following syllable has secondary stress
Here is the scheme compared with the transcriptions in 4 U.S.
dictionaries. (Most British dictionaries now use IPA for their
transcriptions.)
Merriam-Webster American Heritage Random House Webster's New World
[A] a umlaut a umlaut a umlaut a umlaut
[A.] (merged with [A]) o breve o (merged with [A])
[a] a overdot (merged with [A]) A a overdot
/aI/ i macron i macron i macron i macron
/aU/ a u overdot ou ou ou
[C] (merged with [x]) (merged with [x]) (merged with [x]) H
[D] th underlined th in italics th slashed th in italics
/dZ/ j j j j
[E] e e breve e e
/E@/ e schwa a circumflex a circumflex (merged with [e])
/eI/ a macron a macron a macron a macron
[g] g g g g
[I] i i breve i i
[I.] ue ligature (merged with [y]) (merged with [y]) (merged with [y])
[i] e macron e macron e macron e macron
[j] y y y y
[N] <eng> ng ng
[O] o overdot o circumflex o circumflex o circumflex
/OI/ o overdot i oi oi oi ligature
/oU/ o macron o macron o macron o macron
[S] sh sh sh sh ligature
[T] th th th th ligature
/tS/ ch ch ch ch ligature
[U] u overdot oo breve oo breve oo
[u] u umlaut oo macron oo macron oo macron
[V] (merged with [@]) u breve u u
[V"] (merged with [@]) u circumflex u circumflex u circumflex
[W] oe ligature oe ligature OE ligature o umlaut
[x] k underlined KH KH kh ligature
[Y] oe ligature macron (merged with [W]) (merged with [W]) (merged with [W])
[y] ue ligature macron u umlaut Y u umlaut
[Z] zh zh zh zh ligature
[&] a a breve a a
[@] schwa schwa schwa schwa
- superscript schwa syllabicity mark unmarked '
Auditory files demonstrating speech sounds can be obtained by
anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.cmu.edu (or on the World Wide Web at
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/repository.html>).
Look in "/user/ai/areas/nlp/corpora/pron" and
"/user/ai/areas/speech/database/britpron".
rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r"
A rhotic speaker is one who pronounces as a consonant postvocalic
"r", i.e. the "r" after a vowel in words like "world" /wV"rld/. A
nonrhotic speaker either does not pronounce the "r" at all /wV"ld/
or pronounces it as a schwa /wV"@ld/. British Received
Pronunciation (RP) and many other dialects of English are nonrhotic.
Many nonrhotic speakers (including RP speakers, but excluding
most nonrhotic speakers in the southern U.S.) use a "linking r":
they don't pronounce "r" in "for" by itself /fO:/, but they do
pronounce the first "r" in "for ever" /fO: 'rEv@/. Linking "r"
differs from French liaison in that the former happens in any
phonetically appropriate context, whereas the latter also needs
the right syntactic context.
A further development of "linking r" is "intrusive r".
Intrusive-r speakers, because the vowels in "law" (which they
pronounce the same as "lore") and "idea" (which they pronounce
to rhyme with "fear") are identical for them to vowels spelled
with "r", intrude an r in such phrases as "law [r]and order" and
"The idea [r]of it!" They do NOT intrude an [r] after vowels that
are never spelled with an "r". Some people blanch at intrusive r,
but most RP speakers now use it.
How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
Those who round their lips when they say it would probably
transcribe it /dOg/; those who don't round their lips, /dAg/.
Very few people in North America distinguish all three vowels
/A/, /A./, and /O/. Speakers in Eastern and Southern U.S. merge
/A./ and /A/, so that "bother" and "father" rhyme. Speakers in
Western U.S. and in Canada merge /A./ and /O/, so that "cot" and
"caught", "Don" and "Dawn" are pronounced alike. Some speakers
merge all three vowels. The Oxford Companion to the English
Language says: "The merger of vowels in _tot_ and _taught_ begins
in a narrow band in central Pennsylvania and spreads north and
south to influence the West, where the merger is universal. [...]
In New England, where the merger is beginning to occur, speakers
select the first vowel; in the Midland and West, the second vowel
is used for both." Although /A./ is seldom used to transcribe
American pronunciation, the vowel transcribed /O/ may sound like
/A./ to non-American speakers, or it may sound like /O/.
There is a further complication with "dog": U.S. dictionaries
give the pronunciations /dOg/, /dAg/ in that order (and similarly
with some other words ending in "-og", although which ones varies
from dictionary to dictionary). "Dawg", the name of the family dog
in the comic strip "Hi and Lois", may be intended to convey the
pronunciation /dOg/ to (or from) people who usually pronounce the
word /dAg/; or it may be intended as how a child in a community
where /A./ and /O/ are merged might misspell "dog".
Words pronounced differently according to context
There is a general tendency in English whereby when a word with a
stressed final syllable is followed by another word without a pause,
the stress moves forward: "kangaROO", but "KANGaroo court";
"afterNOON", but "AFTernoon nap"; "above BOARD", but "an aBOVEboard
deal". This happens chiefly in noun phrases, but not exclusively so
("acquiESCE" versus "ACquiesce readily"). Consider also "Chinese"
and all numbers ending in "-teen".
When "have to" means "must", the [v] in "have" becomes an [f].
Similarly, in "has to", [z] becomes [s]. When "used to" and
"supposed to" are used in their senses of "formerly" and "ought",
the "-sed" is pronounced /st/; when they're used in other senses,
it's /zd/.
In many dialects, "the" is pronounced /D@/ before a consonant,
and /DI/ before a vowel sound. Many foreigners learning English are
taught this rule explicitly. Native English speakers are also
taught this rule when we sing in choirs. (We do it instinctively in
rapid speech; but in the slower pace of singing, it has to be
brought to our conscious attention.)
Words that have different pronunciations for specialized
meanings include the noun "address" (often stressed on the first
syllable when denoting a location, but stressed on the second
syllable when denoting an oration) "contrary" (often stressed on the
second syllable when the meaning is "perverse"); the verb "discount"
(stressed on the first syllable when the meaning is "to reduce in
price", but on the second syllable when the meaning is "to
disbelieve"); the verb "process" (stressed on the second syllable
when the meaning is "to go in procession"); the noun "recess"
(stressed on the first syllable when it means "a break from
working", but on the second syllable when it means "a secluded
part"); the verb "relay" (stressed on the first syllable when it
means "to pass on radio or TV signals", but on the second syllable
when it means "to pass on something that was said"); and the verb
"second" (stressed on the first syllable when it means "to endorse
a motion", but on the second syllable when it means "to temporarily
re-assign an employee". "Offence" and "defence", usually stressed
on the second syllable, are often in North America stressed on the
first syllable when the context is team sports. (In the U.S., of
course, they are spelled with -se .)
Words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation
"Cocaine" used to be pronounced /'co ca in/ (3 syllables).
"Waistcoat" used to be pronounced /'wEskIt/. "Humble" and "human"
were borrowed from French with no [h] in their pronunciation.
"Forte" in the sense "strong point" comes from French, where the
"e" is not pronounced.
"Zoo" is an abbreviation of "zoological garden". The (popular
but stigmatized) pronunciation of "zoological" as /zu@'lA.dZik@l/
(as opposed to /zo@'lA.dZik@l/) is due to the influence of "zoo".
"Elephant" was "olifaunt" in Middle English, but its spelling was
restored to reflect the Latin "elephantus". Similarly, "crocodile"
was "cokedrill".
"Golf" is Scots. The traditional Scots pronunciation is /gof/.
"Ralph" was traditionally pronounced /ref/ in Britain -- Gilbert and
Sullivan rhymed it with "waif" in _H.M.S. Pinafore_; that's how the
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams pronounced his name; and even today
actor Ralph Fiennes (of _Schindler's List_ fame) is said to
pronounce his name /ref faInz/.
"Medicine" and "regiment" were two-syllable words in the 19th
century: /'mEdsIn/ and /'rEdZm@nt/. /'mEdsIn/ can still be heard
in RP. In 19th-century England, "university" was pronounced
/,ju:nIv'A:sItI/ and "laundry" was pronounced /'lA:ndrI/.
King Arthur would have pronounced his name /'artur/. The h's in
"Arthur" (now universally reflected in the pronunciation) and
"Anthony" (reflected in the U.S. pronunciation) were added in the
15th century -- ornamentally or, in the case of "Anthony", because
of a false connection with Greek _anthos_="flower".
The new pronunciations in such cases are called "spelling
pronunciations". The "speak-as-you-spell movement" is described in
the MEU2 article on "pronunciation".
====================================================================
USAGE DISPUTES
--------------
"acronym"
---------
Strictly, an acronym is a string of initial letters pronounceable
as a word, such as "NATO". Abbreviations like "NBC" have been
variously designated "alphabetisms" and "initialisms", although some
people do call them acronyms. WDEU says, "Dictionaries, however,
do not make this distinction [between acronyms and initialisms]
because writers in general do not"; but two of the best known books
on acronyms are titled _Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations
Dictionary_ (19th ed., Gale, 1993) and _Concise Dictionary of
Acronyms and Initialisms_ (Facts on File, 1988).
The Network Dictionary of Acronyms is available through World Wide
Web (<http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro.html>) or by e-mail
(send the word "help" to freetext@iruccvax.ucc.ie).
"all ... not"
-------------
"All ... not" cannot be condemned on the grounds of novelty, as
"All that glitters is not gold" and "All is not lost" show. "All
that glitters is not gold" is from _Parabolae_, a book of poems
written circa 1175 by Alanus de Insulis, a French monk: _Non teneas
aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum_ = "Do not hold as gold all that
shines like gold". It was Englished by Chaucer in the _Canterbury
Tales_ (1389) as: "But al thyng which that shyneth as the gold /
Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told." "All is not lost"
occurs in Milton's _Paradise Lost_ (1667).
The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs gives the proverbs "All
truths are not to be told" (1350), "All things fit not all persons"
(1532), "All feet tread not in one shoe" (1640), "All are not saints
that go to church" (1659), and "All Stuarts are not sib to the king"
(1857). It gives no proverbs at all beginning "Not all".
"All ... not" can, however, be condemned on the grounds of
potential ambiguity. When I proposed the sentence "All the people
who used the bathtub did not clean it afterwards" as ambiguous,
many people vigorously disputed that it was ambiguous. But they
were about evenly split on what it did mean! (John Lawler writes:
"There's a very large literature on quantifier ambiguities. Guy
Carden did the definitive early studies in the '60s and '70s, and
many others have contributed since then.") "Not all the people who
used the bathtub cleaned it afterwards" (or, if the other meaning is
intended, "None of the people who used the bathtub cleaned it
afterwards") is free of this ambiguity.
("Not all" can also be used rhetorically to mean "not even all",
but only in an exalted style incompatible with bathtubs: "Not all
the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm from an anointed
king" -- Shakespeare, _Richard II_, 1595.)
Fowler quoted a correspondent who urged him to prescribe "not
all", and commented: "This gentleman has logic on his side, logic
has time on its side, and probably the only thing needed for his
gratification is that he should live long enough."
"alot"
------
This misspelling of "a lot" is frequently mentioned as a pet
peeve. It rarely appears in print, but is often found in the U.S.
in informal writing and on Usenet. There does not seem to be a
corresponding "alittle".
"alright"
---------
The spelling "alright" is recorded from 1887. It was defended
by Fowler (in one of the Society for Pure English tracts, not in
MEU), on the analogy of "almighty" and "altogether", and on the
grounds that "The answers are alright" (= "The answers are O.K.") is
less ambiguous than "The answers are all right" (which could mean
"All the answers are right"). But it is still widely condemned.
"between you and I"
-------------------
The prescriptive rule is to use "you and I" in the same contexts
as "I" (i.e., as a subject), and "you and me" in the same contexts
as "me" (i.e., as an object). In "between you and me", since "you
and me" is the object of the preposition "between", "me" is the only
correct form. But English speakers have a tendency to regard
compounds joined with "and" as units, so that some speakers use "you
and me" exclusively, and others use "you and I" exclusively,
although such practices "have no place in modern edited prose"
(WDEU). "Between you and I" was used by Shakespeare in _The
Merchant of Venice_. Since this antedates the teaching of English
grammar, it is probably *not* "hypercorrection". (This is mentioned
merely to caution against the hypercorrection theory, not to defend
the phrase.) Shakespeare also used "between you and me".
"company is" vs "company are"
Use of a plural verb after a singular noun denoting a group of
persons (known as a noun of multitude) is commoner in the U.K. than
in the U.S. Fowler wrote: "_The Cabinet _is_ divided_ is better,
because in the order of thought a whole must precede division; and
_The Cabinet _are_ agreed_ is better, because it takes two or more
to agree."
"could care less"
-----------------
The idiom "couldn't care less", meaning "doesn't care at all"
(the meaning in full is "cares so little that he couldn't possibly
care less"), originated in Britain around 1940. "Could care less",
which is used with the same meaning, developed in the U.S. around
1960. We get disputes about whether the latter was originally a
mis-hearing of the former; whether it was originally ironic; or
whether it arose from uses where the negative element was separated
from "could" ("None of these writers could care less..."). Henry
Churchyard believes that this sentence by Jane Austen may be
pertinent: "You know nothing and you care less, as people say."
(_Mansfield Park_ (1815), Chapter 29) Meaning-saving elaborations
have also been suggested: "As if I could care less!"; "I could care
less, but I'd have to try"; "If I cared even one iota -- which I
don't --, then I could care less."
Recently encountered has been "could give a damn", used in the
sense "couldn't give a damn".
An earlier transition in which "not" was dropped was the one that
gave us "but" in the sense of "only". "I will not say but one
word", where "but" meant "(anything) except", became "I will say but
one word."
Other idioms that say the opposite of what they mean include:
"head over heels" (which could mean turning cartwheels, i.e. "head
over heels over head over heels", but is also used to mean "upside-
down", i.e. "heels over head"); "Don't sneeze more than you can
help" (meaning "more than you cannot help"; "help" here means
"prevent"); "It's hard to open, much less acknowledge, the letters"
(where "less" means "harder", i.e. "more"); "I shouldn't wonder if
it didn't rain"; "I miss not seeing you"; and "I turned my life
around 360 degrees" -- not to mention undisputedly ironic phrases
such as "fat chance", "Thanks a *lot*", and "I should worry".
"could of"
----------
We get frequent complaints about the occurrence of "of" in
unedited prose where the meaning is "have". "Have" contracts to
"'ve", so "could've", "might've", "must've", "should've",
"would've", etc. (and their negatives, "couldn't've", etc.), should
be so spelled. People have testified that it's got beyond a
spelling mistake: they've heard "would of" spoken with a clear
pause between the words.
WDEU says: "The OED Supplement dates the naive (or ignorant) use
of _of_ back to 1837. [...Y]ou had better avoid it in your own
writing. [...] Bernstein 1977 allows that a schoolchild cannot be
blamed for _could of_ -- once."
"different to", "different than"
"Different from" is the construction that no one will object to.
"Different to" is fairly common informally in the U.K., but rare in
the U.S. "Different than" is sometimes used to avoid the cumbersome
"different from that which", etc. (e.g., "a very different Pamela
than I used to leave all company and pleasure for" -- Samuel
Richardson). Some U.S. speakers use "different than" exclusively.
Some people have insisted on "different from" on the grounds that
"from" is required after "to differ". But Fowler points out that
there are many other adjectives that do not conform to the
construction of their parent verbs (e.g., "accords with", but
"according to"; "derogates from", but "derogatory to").
The Collins Cobuild Bank of English shows choice of preposition
after "different" to be distributed as follows:
"from" "to" "than"
----- ---- ------
U.K. writing 87.6 10.8 1.5
U.K. speech 68.8 27.3 3.9
U.S. writing 92.7 0.3 7.0
U.S. speech 69.3 0.6 30.1
"done"="finished"
-----------------
The OED's first citation for "done" in the sense of "finished" is
from 1300, and it has been in continuous use since then. It was
used in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer ("When the Clerkes have dooen
syngyng"); by Francis Bacon ("Dinner being done, the Tirsan
retireth", 1611); by John Donne ("And having done that, Thou haste
done, I have no more", 1623); by Dryden ("Now the Chime of Poetry is
done", 1697); and by Dickens ("when the reading of this document is
done", 1859). According to The Oxford Dictionary of English
Proverbs (OUP, 3rd ed., 1970, ISBN 0-19-869118-1), the proverb
"Man's work lasts till set of sun; woman's work is never done" is
first recorded with the words "is never done" in 1721.
In the early 20th century, for some reason objections to the use
of "done" in the sense of "finished" arose in the U.S. It became
regarded as colloquial, and in 1969 only 53% of AHD's usage panel
approved of it in writing. Although these objections have now
subsided, one should still beware that the two senses of "done" may
cause ambiguity: does "The work will be done next month" mean "The
work will get done next month" or "The work will be done by next
month"?
The use of "be done" with a personal subject, meaning "have
finished", is described by the OED as "chiefly Irish, Sc., U.S., and
dial." The first citation is dated 1766, and is from Thomas Amory,
a British writer of Irish descent: "I was done with love for ever."
American users have included Thomas Jefferson ("One farther favor
and I am done", 1771); Mark Twain ("I am done with official life for
the present", 1872); and Robert Frost ("But I am done with apple-
picking now", 1914). Users in the British Isles have included
Robert Louis Stevenson ("We were no sooner done eating than Clumsy
brought out an old, thumbed greasy pack of cards", 1886) and George
Bernard Shaw ("You can't be done: you've eaten nothing", 1898).
"Be finished" is also used in the sense of "have finished".
Jespersen's first citation is from Oliver Goldsmith ("When we were
finished for the day", 1766). English-speakers should be careful
not to render this construction literally into other languages:
Partridge recounts the story of an Englishman who in a French
restaurant said _Je suis fini_ to the waiter, who looked at the
"finished" customer with some concern.
Any of "be done", "be finished", "have done", and "have finished"
may be followed either with a gerund, or with "with" plus any
noun phrase. If "with" is not used and the noun phrase is not a
gerund, then only "have finished" may be used ("have done" would not
have the sense "have finished" here). Use of "with" changes the
meaning: "I have finished construction of the building" means that
the building is fully constructed, whereas "I have finished with
construction of the building" means merely that *my* part is over.
These uses of "be done" and "be finished" are examples of
what Fowler called the "intransitive past participle", where,
instead of the more usual transformation:
"A {transitive verb}s B" -> "B is {transitive verb}ed"
we see the transformation:
"A {intransitive verb}s" -> "A is {intransitive verb}ed"
Fowler gives the examples: fallen angels, the risen sun, a
vanished hand, past times, the newly arrived guest, a grown girl,
absconded debtors, escaped prisoners, the deceased lady, the
dear departed, coalesced stems, a collapsed lorry, we are agreed,
a couched lion, an eloped pair, an expired lease.
double "is"
-----------
Double "is", as in "The reason is, is that..." is a recent U.S.
development, much decried. Of course, "What this is is..." is
undisputedly correct.
"due to"
--------
"Due to" meaning "caused by" is undisputedly correct in contexts
where "due" can be construed as an adjective (e.g., "failure due to
carelessness"). Its use in contexts where "due" is an adverb
("He failed due to carelessness") has been disputed. Fowler says
that "_due to_ is often used by the illiterate as though it had
passed, like _owing to_, into a mere compound preposition". But
Fowler was writing in 1926; what hadn't happened then may well
have happened by now.
"functionality"
---------------
"Functionality" is often attacked as a needless long variant of
"function". But they are differentiated in meaning. "The function
of a screwdriver is to turn screws. Its functionality includes
prying open paint cans, stirring paint, scraping paint, and acting
as a chisel. The function is what it is designed to do. The
functionality is what you can do with it." -- Evan Kirshenbaum.
A thing's functionality includes its functions if and only if it
does what it was designed to do. This specialized meaning of
"functionality" is not yet in most dictionaries. The earliest
citation we have was found by Fred Shapiro in the June 1977 issue of
Fortune: "The way to grow, an I.B.M. maxim says, is to 'increase
the functionality of the system,' or, in plain English, to give the
customer the capacity to do more than he wants to do in the
knowledge that he inevitably will."
Mark Odegard suggests a similar distinction between "mode" and
"modality": "A 'mode' is a way of doing something. A 'modality'
is doing something according to a protocol."
Gender-neutral pronouns
-----------------------
"Singular 'they'" is the name generally given to the use of
"they", "them", "their", or "theirs" with a singular antecedent such
as "someone" or "everyone", as in "Everyone was blowing their nose."
(It does not refer to the use of singular verbs in such mock-
illiterate sentences as "Them's the breaks" and "Them as has,
gets." Any verb agreeing with a singular "they" is plural:
"Someone killed him, and they are going to pay for it.")
Singular "they" has been used in English since the time of
Chaucer. Prescriptive grammarians have traditionally (since 1746,
although the actual practice goes right back to 1200) prescribed
"he": "Everyone was blowing his nose." In 1926, Fowler wrote
that singular "they" had an "old-fashioned sound [...]; few good
modern writers would flout the grammarians so conspicuously." But
in recent decades, singular "they" has gained popularity as a result
of the move towards gender-neutral language.
For a defence of singular "they", with examples from Shakespeare,
Jane Austen, and others, see Henry Churchyard's page at
<http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/austheir.html>. But note that
not all of us are as keen on singular "they" as Henry is. Asked to
fill in the blank in sentences such as "A patient who doesn't
accurately report ___ sexual history to the doctor runs the risk of
misdiagnosis", only 3% of AHD3's usage panel chose "their". AHD3's
usage note says: "this solution ignores a persistent intuition
that expressions such as _everyone_ and _each student_ should in
fact be treated as grammatically singular."
Proposals for other gender-neutral pronouns get made from time to
time, and some can be found in actual use ("sie" and "hir" are the
ones most frequently found on Usenet). Cecil Adams, in _Return of
the Straight Dope_ (Ballantine, 1994, ISBN 0-345-38111-4), says that
some eighty such terms have been proposed, the first of them in the
1850s. John Chao (chao@hoss.ee.udel.edu) is constructing a long FAQ
on this topic: <http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~chao/gfp/>.
Discussions about gender-neutral pronouns tend to go round and
round and never reach a conclusion. Please refrain.
(We also get disputes about the use of the word "gender" in the
sense of "sex", i.e., of whether a human being is male or female.
This also dates from the 14th century. By 1900 it was restricted
to jocular use, but it has now been revived because of the "sexual
relations" sense of "sex".)
"hopefully", "thankfully"
-------------------------
The traditional, undisputed senses of these words are active:
"in a hopeful manner", "in a thankful manner".
The OED's first citation for "hopefully" in the passive sense
(= "It is to be hoped that") is from 1932, but no unmistakable
citation has been found between then and 1954. (WDEU has three
ambiguous citations dated 1941, 1951, and 1954.) WDEU's first
citation for the passive sense of "thankfully" (= "We can be
thankful that") is from 1963. These uses became popular in the
early '60s, and have been widely criticized on the grounds that
they should have been "hopably" and "thankably" (on the analogy of
"arguably", "predictably", "regrettably", "inexplicably", etc.),
and on the grounds that "I hope" is more direct.
The disputed, passive use of "hopefully" is often referred to as
"sentence-modifying"; but it can also modify a single word, as is
hopefully clear from this example. :-) Most adverbs that can modify
sentences -- including "apparently", "clearly", "curiously",
"evidently", "fortunately", "ironically", "mercifully", "sadly", and
the "-ably" examples above -- can be converted into "It is apparent
that", etc. But a few adverbs are used in a way that instead must
be construed with an ellipsis of "to speak" or "speaking". These
include "briefly" (the OED has citations of "briefly" used in this
way from 1514 on, including one from Shakespeare), "seriously"
(1644; used by Fowler in his article DIDACTICISM in MEU), "strictly"
(1680), "roughly" (1841), "frankly" (1847), "honestly" (1898),
"hopefully", and "thankfully". Acquisition of such a use is far
from automatic; for example, no one uses "fearfully" in a manner
analogous to "hopefully".
AHD3 says: "It might have been expected that the flurry of
objections to _hopefully_ would have subsided once the usage became
well established. Instead, increased currency of the usage appears
only to have made the critics more adamant. In the 1969 Usage Panel
survey the usage was acceptable to 44 percent of the Panel; in the
most recent survey [1992] it was acceptable to only 27 percent.
[...] Yet the Panel has not shown any signs of becoming generally
more conservative: in the very same survey panelists were disposed
to accept once-vilified usages such as the employment of _contact_
and _host_ as verbs." AHD3 quotes William Safire as saying: "The
word 'hopefully' has become the litmus test to determine whether one
is a language snob or a language slob."
Discussions about "hopefully" and "thankfully" go round and round
for ever without reaching a conclusion. We advise you to refrain.
"impact"="to affect"
--------------------
"Impact", which comes from Latin _impactus_, past participle of
_impingere_ = "to push against", is first recorded in English in
1601 in the form of the past participle, "impacted". The verb "to
impact", meaning "to press closely into or in something", dates from
1791. The noun "impact" dates from 1781. The (undisputed)
expression "impacted wisdom tooth" dates from 1876.
There is another English verb derived from Latin _impingere_:
"to impinge", first recorded in 1605. "To impinge on" shares with
"to impact" the sense "to come sharply in contact with", and some
people consider it stylistically preferable. Unlike "to impact",
"to impinge on" has acquired the figurative sense "to encroach on",
possibly through confusion with "to infringe". This sense is
attested from 1758 on.
The usage dispute centres on the use of the verb "to impact (on)"
in the sense "to affect, to have an effect on, to influence". The
OED's earliest citations where this is clearly the sense are: for
"impact on", 1951; and for transitive "impact", 1963.
Opposition to these uses is widespread. 84% of AHD3's Usage Panel
disapproved of "social pathologies [...] that impact heavily on such
a community"; and 95% disapproved of "a potential for impacting our
health". Among the objections to such use of "impact" are that it
sounds pretentious and bureaucratic, and that it may connote to the
reader violence that the author did not intend. The latter
objection can apply also to "impact" the noun. Kenneth Hudson, in
_The Dictionary of Diseased English_ (Macmillan, 1977), noted:
"'Yves St. Laurent's Triangles give even more design impact to your
bed' (Washington Star, 17.10.76) is not the happiest of sentences.
'Make a nice bed look even better' would have been more reassuring."
"It needs cleaned"
------------------
is not standard English, although "It needs to be cleaned", "It
needs cleaning", and "I need it cleaned" all are. "It needs
cleaned" is common informally in some parts of the U.S., and in
Scotland, where it may have originated.
"It's me" vs "It is I"
----------------------
(freely adapted from an article by Roger Lustig)
Fowler says: "_me_ is technically wrong in _It wasn't me_ etc.;
but the phrase being of its very nature colloquial, such a lapse is
of no importance".
The rule for what he and others consider technically right is
*not* (as is commonly misstated) that the nominative should *always*
be used after "to be". Rather, it is that "to be" should link two
noun phrases of the same case, whether this be nominative or
accusative:
I believe that he is I. Who do you believe that he is?
I believe him to be me. Whom do you believe him to be?
According to the traditional grammar being used here, "to be" is not
a transitive verb, but a *copulative* verb. When you say that A is
B, you don't imply that A, by being B, is doing something to B.
(After all, B is also doing it to A.) Other verbs considered
copulative are "to become", "to remain", "to seem", and "to look".
Sometimes in English, though, "to be" does seem to have the
force of a transitive verb; e.g., in Gelett Burgess's:
I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
The occurrence of "It's me", etc., is no doubt partly due to this
perceived transitive force. In the French _C'est moi_, often cited
as analogous, _moi_ is not in the accusative, but a special form
known as the "disjunctive", used for emphasis. If _etre_ were a
transitive verb in French, _C'est moi_ would be _Ce m'est_.
In languages such as German and Latin that inflect between the
nominative and the accusative, B in "A is B" is nominative just like
A. In English, no nouns and only a few personal pronouns ("I",
"we", "thou", "he", "she", "they" and "who") inflect between the
nominative and the accusative. In other words, we've gotten out of
the habit, for the most part.
Also, in English we derive meaning from word position, far more
than one would in Latin, somewhat more than in German, even. In
those languages, one can rearrange sentences drastically for
rhetorical or other purposes without confusion (heh) because
inflections (endings, etc.) tell you how the words relate to one
another. In English, "The dog ate the cat" and "The cat ate the
dog" are utterly different in meaning, and if we wish to have the
former meaning with "cat" prior to "dog" in the sentence, we have to
say "The cat was eaten by the dog" (change of voice) or "It is the
cat that the dog ate." In German, one can reverse the meaning by
inflecting the word (or its article): _Der Hund frass die Katze_
and _Den Hund frass die Katze_ reverse the meaning of who ate whom.
In Latin, things are even more flexible: almost any word order will
do:
Feles edit canem
Feles canem edit
Canem edit feles
Canem feles edit
Edit canem feles
Edit feles canem
all mean the same, the choice of word order being made perhaps for
rhetorical or poetic purpose.
English is pretty much the opposite of that: hardly any
inflection, great emphasis on order. As a result, things have
gotten a little irregular with the personal pronouns. And there's
uncertainty as to how to use them; the usual rules aren't there,
because the usual word needs no rules, being the same for nominative
and accusative.
The final factor is the traditional use of Latin grammatical
concepts to teach English grammar. This historical quirk dates to
the 17th century, and has never quite left us. From this we get the
Latin-derived rule, which Fowler still acknowledges. And we *do*
follow that rule to some extent: "Who are they?" (not "Who are
them?" or "Whom are they?") "We are they!" (in response to the
preceding) "It is I who am at fault." "That's the man who
he is."
But not always. "It is me" is attested since the 16th Century.
(Speakers who would substitute "me" for "I" in the "It is I who am
at fault" example would also sacrifice the agreement of person, and
substitute "is" for "am".)
"less" vs "fewer"
----------------
The rule usually encountered is: use "fewer" for things you
count (individually), and "less" for things you measure: "fewer
apples", "less water". Since "less" is also used as an adverb
("less successful"), "fewer" helps to distinguish "fewer successful
professionals" (fewer professionals who are successful) from "less
successful professionals" (professionals who are less successful).
(No such distinction is possible with "more", which serves as the
antonym of both "less" and "fewer".)
"Less" has been used in the sense of "fewer" since the time of
King Alfred the Great (9th century), and is still common in that
sense, especially informally in the U.S.; but in British English it
became so rare that the 1st edition of the OED (in a section
prepared in 1902) gave no citation more recent than 1579 and gave
the usage label "Now regarded as incorrect." The 2nd edition of the
OED added two 19th-century citations, and changed the usage label to
"Frequently found but generally regarded as incorrect."
Fowler mentioned it only in passing, and cited no real examples.
In a section whose main intent was to disparage "less" in the sense
"smaller" or "lower", he wrote: "It is true that _less_ and
_lesser_ were once ordinary comparatives of _little_ [...] and that
therefore they were roughly equivalent in sense to our _smaller_
[...]. The modern tendency is so to restrict _less_ that it means
not _smaller_, but _a smaller amount of_, is the comparative rather
of _a little_ than of _little_, and is consequently applied only to
things that are measured by amount and not by size or quality or
number, nouns with which _much_ and _little_, not _great_ and
_small_, nor _high_ and _low_, nor _many_ and _few_, are the
appropriate contrasted epithets: _less butter, courage_; but _a
smaller army, table_; _a lower price, degree_; _fewer opportunities,
people_. Plurals, and singulars with _a_ or _an_, will naturally
not take _less_; _less tonnage_, but _fewer ships_; _less manpower_,
but _fewer men_ [...]; though a few plurals like _clothes_ and
_troops_, really equivalent to singulars of indefinite amount, are
exceptions: _could do with less troops_ or _clothes_."
Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1934), gave the
usage label "now incorrect, according to strict usage, except with a
collective; as, to wear _less_ clothes." Of the panelists for The
Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1975), 76% said that they
observed "less"/"fewer" distinction in speech, and 85% in writing.
The editors noted: "even those panelists who have not observed the
distinction in the past now regard it as a useful precept to bear in
mind in the future."
Partisans of "fewer" use "one car fewer" rather than "one
fewer car", and "far fewer" rather than "much fewer".
"like" vs "as"
--------------
For making comparisons (i.e., asserting that one thing is similar
to another), the prescribed choices are:
1. A is like B.
2. A behaves like B.
3. A behaves as B does.
4. A behaves as in an earlier situation.
In 1 and 2, "like" governs a noun (or a pronoun or a noun phrase).
In 3, "as" introduces a clause with a noun and a verb. In 4, "as"
introduces a prepositional phrase. Look at what the word
introduces, and you will know which to use.
In informal English, "like" is often used in place of "as" in
sentences of type 3 and 4. "Like" has been been used in the sense
of "as if" since the 14th century, and in the sense of "as" since
the 15th century, but such use was fairly rare until the 19th
century, and "a writer who uses the construction in formal style
risks being accused of illiteracy or worse" (AHD3). "Like" in 1
and 2 is a preposition; "as"/"like" in 3 or 4 and "as if" are
conjunctions. Fowler put "_Like_ as conjunction" first in his list
of "ILLITERACIES" (he defined "illiteracy" as "offence against the
literary idiom").
In some sentences of type of 3, "as" may sound too formal:
"Pronounce it as you spell it." To avoid both this formality and
the stigma of "like" here, you may use "the way": "Pronounce it the
way you spell it." But this solution is available only if you are
specifying a single way; it doesn't work, for example, in "Play it
as it's never been played before." ("Play it in a way..." might
work here, but lacks the connotations of enthusiasm and excellence
that "play it as" has.)
The most famous use of "like" as a conjunction was in the 1950s
slogan for Winston Cigarettes: "Winston tastes good, like a
cigarette should." The New Yorker wrote that "it would pain [Sir
Winston Churchill] dreadfully", but in fact conjunctive "like" was
used by Churchill himself in informal speech: "We are overrun by
them, like the Australians are by rabbits." "Like" in the sense of
"as if" was, until recently, more often heard in the Southern U.S.
than elsewhere, and was perceived by Britons as an Americanism.
When used in this sense, it is never now followed by the inflected
past subjunctive: people say "like it is" or "like it was", not
"like it were".
Sometimes, "as" introduces a noun phrase with no following verb.
When it does, it does not signify a qualitative comparison, but
rather may:
a) indicate a role being played. "They fell on the supplies as men
starving" means that they were actually starving men; in "They fell
on the supplies like men starving", one is *comparing* them to
starving men. "You're acting as a fool" might be appropriate if you
obtained the job of court jester; "You're acting like a fool"
expresses the more usual meaning.
b) introduce examples. ("Some animals, as the fox and the squirrel,
have bushy tails.") "Such as" and "like" are more common in this use.
For the use of "like" here, see the next entry.
c) be short for "as ... as": "He's deaf as a post" means "He's as
deaf as a post" (a quantitative comparison).
"like" vs "such as"
-------------------
The Little, Brown Handbook (6th ed., HarperCollins, 1995) says:
"Strictly, _such as_ precedes an example that represents a larger
subject, whereas _like_ indicates that two subjects are comparable.
_Steve has recordings of many great saxophonists such as Ben Webster
and Lee Konitz._ _Steve wants to be a great jazz saxophonist like
Ben Webster and Lee Konitz._" Nobody would use "such as" in the
second sentence; the disputed usage is "like" in the first sentence.
Opposing it are: earlier editions of The Little, Brown Handbook
(which did not use the hedge "strictly"); the _Random House English
Language Desk Reference_ (1995); _The Globe and Mail Style Book_
(Penguin, 1995); _Webster's Dictionary & Thesaurus_ (Shooting Star
Press, 1995); _Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art_ by James
Kilpatrick (Andrews and McMeel, 1993); _The Wordwatcher's Guide to
Good Writing and Grammar_ by Morton S. Freeman (Writer's Digest,
1990); _Word Perfect: A Dictionary of Current English Usage_ by
John O. E. Clark (Harrap, 1987); and _Keeping Up the Style_ by
Leslie Sellers (Pitman, 1975).
The OED, first edition, in its entry on "like" (which is in a
section prepared in 1903), said that "in modern use", "like" "often
= 'such as', introducing a particular example of a class respecting
which something is predicated". Merriam-Webster Editorial
Department unearthed the following 19th-century citations for me:
"Good sense, like hers, will always act when really called upon",
Jane Austen, _Mansfield Park_, 1814; "A straight-forward,
open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational unaffected woman, like
Miss Taylor, may be safely left to their own concerns", Jane Austen,
_Emma_, 1816; "[...] to argue that because a well-stocked island,
like Great Britain, has not, as far as is known [...]", Charles
Darwin, _Origin of the Species_, 1859.
Fowler apparently saw nothing wrong with "like" in this sense:
in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, he gave "resembling, such as"
without a usage label as one its meanings, and gave the example "a
critic like you", which he explained as "of the class that you
exemplify". And he used it himself in the passage quoted under
"'less' vs 'fewer'" above. More commonly, though, he wrote "such
... as" when using examples to define the set ("such bower-birds'
treasures as _au pied de la lettre_, _a` merveille_, [...] and
_sauter aux yeux_"), and "as" or "such as" when the words preceding
the examples sufficed to define the set ("familiar words in -o, as
_halo_ and _dado_"; "simple narrative poems in short stanzas, such
as _Chevy Chase_"). This is the same restrictive vs nonrestrictive
mentioned under "'that' vs 'which'": "Ballads, such as Chevy Chase,
can be danced to" would imply that all ballads can be danced to,
whereas "Such ballads as Chevy Chase can be danced to" would not.
_Modern American Usage_ by Wilson Follett (Hill and Wang, 1966)
says: "_Such as_ is close in meaning to _like_ and may often be
interchanged with it. The shade of difference between them is that
_such as_ leads the mind to imagine an indefinite group of objects
[...]. The other comparing word _like_ suggests a closer
resemblance among the things compared [...]. [...P]urists object
to phrases of the type _a writer like Shakespeare_, _a leader like
Lincoln_. No writer, say these critics, _is_ like Shakespeare; and
in this they are wrong; writers are alike in many things and the
context usually makes clear what the comparison proposes to our
attention. _Such as Shakespeare_ may sound less impertinent, but
if Shakespeare were totally incomparable _such as_ would be open to
the same objection as _like_." Bernstein, in _Miss Thistlebottom's
Hobgoblins_ (Farrar, 1971), agrees, calling those who object to
"German composers like Beethoven" "nit-pickers".
"more/most/very unique"
-----------------------
Fowler and other conservatives urge restricting the meaning
of "unique" to "having no like or equal". (OED says "in this sense,
readopted from French at the end of the 18th Century and regarded as
a foreign word down to the middle of the 19th.") Used in this
sense, it is an incomparable: either something is "unique" or it
isn't, and there can be no degrees of uniqueness. Those who use
phrases like "more unique", "most unique", and "very unique"
are using "unique" in the weaker sense of "unusual, distinctive".
"near miss"
-----------
A near miss is a near-hit.
"none is" vs "none are"
-----------------------
With mass nouns, you have to use the singular. ("None of the
wheat is...") With count nouns, you can use either the singular or
the plural. ("None of the books is..." or "None of the books
are...") Usually, the plural sounds more natural, unless you're
trying to emphasize the idea of "not one", or if the words that
follow work better in the singular.
The fullest (prescriptive) treatment is in Eric Partridge's book
_Usage and Abusage_ (Penguin, 1970, 0-14-051024-9). In the original
edition Partridge had prescribed the singular in certain cases, but
a rather long-winded letter from a correspondent persuaded him to
retract.
Plurals of Latin/Greek words
Not all Latin words ending in "-us" had plurals in "-i".
"Apparatus", "cantus", "coitus", "hiatus", "impetus", "Jesus",
"nexus", "plexus", "prospectus", and "status" were 4th declension in
Latin, and had plurals in "-us" with a long "u". "Corpus", "genus",
and "opus" were 3rd declension, with plurals "corpora", "genera",
and "opera". "Virus" is not attested in the plural in Latin, and is
of a rare form (2nd declension neuter in -us) that makes it
debatable what the Latin plural would have been; the only plural in
English is "viruses". "Omnibus" and "rebus" were not nominative
nouns in Latin. "Ignoramus" was not a noun in Latin.
Not all classical words ending in "-a" had plurals in "-ae".
"Anathema", "aroma", "bema", "carcinoma", "charisma", "diploma",
"dogma", "drama", "edema", "enema", "enigma", "lemma", "lymphoma",
"magma", "melisma", "miasma", "sarcoma", "schema", "soma", "stigma",
"stoma", and "trauma" are from Greek, where they had plurals in
"-ata". "Quota" was not a noun in Latin. (It comes from the
Latin expression _quota pars_, where _quota_ is the feminine
form of an interrogative pronoun meaning "what number". In *that*
use, it did have plural _quotae_, but in English the only plural
is "quotas".)
Not all classical-sounding words ending in "-um" have plurals in
"-a". "Factotum", "nostrum", and "quorum" were not nouns in Latin.
(_Totus_ = "everything" and _noster_ = "our" were conjugated like
nouns in Latin; but "factotum" comes from _fac totum_ = "do
everything", and "nostrum" comes from _nostrum remedium_ = "our
remedy".) "Conundrum", "panjandrum", "tantrum", and "vellum" are
not Latin words.
If in doubt, consult a dictionary (or use the English plural in
"-s" or "-es"). One plural that you *will* find in U.S.
dictionaries, "octopi", raises the ire of purists (the Greek plural
is "octopodes").
The classical-style plurals of "penis" and "clitoris" are "penes"
/'piniz/ and "clitorides" /klI'tOrIdiz/.
The Latin plural of "curriculum vitae" is "curricula vitae".
Some people who know a little Latin think it should be "curricula
vitarum" (since _vitae_ means "of a life" and _vitarum_ means "of
lives"); but to an ancient Roman, "curricula vitarum" would suggest
that each document described more than one life. This is a feature
of the Latin genitive of content, which differs in this regard from
the more common Latin genitive of possession.
Foreign plurals => English singulars
Some uses of classical plurals as singulars in English are
undisputed: "opera", "stamina", "aspidistra". ("Opera", still used
as the plural of "opus", became singular in Vulgar Latin, and then
in Italian acquired the sense "musical drama", giving rise to the
English word.) "Agenda" once excited controversy but is now
accepted. Others are the subject of current controversy: "data"
(used by Winston Churchill!), "erotica", "insignia", "media",
"regalia", "trivia". Yet others are still widely stigmatized:
"bacteria", "candelabra", "criteria", "curricula", "phenomena",
"strata".
"Bona fides", "kudos", and "minutia" are singulars in Latin or
Greek.
"Graffiti" (plural in Italian) is disputed in English. But
"zucchini" (also plural in Italian) is the invariable singular form
in English (the English plural is "zucchini" or "zucchinis").
"Biscotti" seems to be going the same way. The names of types of
pasta (cannelloni, cappelletti, ditali, fusilli, gnocchi,
maccheroni, manicotti, ravioli, rigatoni, spaghetti, spaghettini,
taglierini, tortellini, vermicelli, ziti, which are masculine plural
in Italian; and conchiglie, farfalle, fettuccine, linguine, rotelle,
which are feminine plural; some of the -e words are often spelled
with -i in English; _maccheroni_ is "macaroni" in English) are
treated as mass nouns in English: they take singular verbs, but
plurals are not made from them. (Many of the words listed as
disputed above are also treated as mass nouns when they are used as
singulars.)
Preposition at end
------------------
Yes, yes, we've all heard the following anecdotes:
(1) Winston Churchill was editing a proof of one of his books, when
he noticed that an editor had clumsily rearranged one of Churchill's
sentences so that it wouldn't end with a preposition. Churchill
scribbled in the margin, "This is the sort of English up with which
I will not put." (This is often quoted with "arrant nonsense"
substituted for "English", or with other variations. The Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations cites Sir Ernest Gowers' _Plain Words_
(1948), where the anecdote begins, "It is said that Churchill...";
so we don't know exactly what Churchill wrote. According to the
Oxford Companion to the English Language, Churchill's words were
"bloody nonsense" and the variants are euphemisms.)
(2) The Guinness Book of (World) Records used to have a category
for "most prepositions at end". The incumbent record was a sentence
put into the mouth of a boy who didn't want to be read excerpts from
a book about Australia as a bedtime story: "What did you bring that
book that I don't want to be read to from out of about 'Down Under'
up for?" Mark Brader (msb@sq.com -- all this is to the best of his
recollection; he didn't save the letter, and doesn't have access to
the British editions) wrote to Guinness, asking: "What did you say
that the sentence with the most prepositions at the end was 'What
did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to from out of
about "Down Under" up for?' for? The preceding sentence has one
more." Norris McWhirter replied, promising to include this
improvement in the next British edition; but actually it seems that
Guinness, no doubt eventually realising that this could be done
recursively, dropped the category.
(3) "Excuse me, where is the library at?"
"Here at Hahvahd, we never end a sentence with a preposition."
"O.K. Excuse me, where is the library at, *asshole*?"
Fowler and nearly every other respected prescriptivist see
NOTHING wrong with ending a clause with a preposition; Fowler
calls it a "superstition". ("Never end a sentence with a
preposition" is how the superstition is usually stated, although it
would "naturally" extend to any placement of a preposition later
than the noun or pronoun it governs.) Indeed, Fowler considers "a
good land to live in" grammatically superior to "a good land in
which to live", since one cannot say *"a good land which to
inhabit".
(Phillip Eberz plagiarized this FAQ entry to produce his WWW
page at <http://www.lrcs.com/ojohaven/fun/brokenrules.html>; he
has refused to credit me.)
"quality"
---------
The attributive use of "quality", as in "quality workmanship", is
sometimes questioned. The alternative that nobody will object to is
"high-quality" (for which OED's first citation is from 1910).
OED's first citation of "quality" in the sense "high quality,
excellence" is from Shakespeare (1606): "The Grecian youths are
full of qualitie, Their loving well composed, with guift of nature."
(Troilus and Cressida, IV iv). It seems to have been in steady use
since then. The proverb "Quality is better than quantity" is first
recorded in 1604 in the form "The gravest wits [...] The qualitie,
not quantitie, respect."
The attributive use of "quality" is another matter. OED has a
citation of "quality air" from 1701; but there is only scattered
evidence between then and the following note in _A Manual for
Writers_, by John Matthews Manly and John Arthur Powell (University
of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1915): "~Quality~ is grossly misused as
an adjective; fortunately the misuse is confined almost entirely to
advertisements, where all sorts of violence are done to the
language: 'Quality clothes! Built (!) from the most exclusive (!)
designs.'" The next dictionary evidence after the OED's citation is
the listing in Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd ed.
(1934), which labels it "colloquial, chiefly U.S.". Chamber's
Twentieth Century Dictionary, 1959 edition, calls it "vulgar".
Modern dictionaries do not give it a usage label. It is attacked by
Morton S. Freeman (_A Handbook of Problem Words and Phrases_, ISI,
1987) and by James Kilpatrick (_Fine Print: Reflections on the
Writing Art_, Andrews and McMeel, 1993), and prohibited by _The
Globe and Mail Style Book_ (Penguin, 1995). It is defended by
Theodore Bernstein (_Dos, Don'ts, and Maybes of English Usage_,
Barnes & Noble, 1977). _Bloomsbury Good Word Guide_ (Bloomsbury,
1988) and _Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage_ (Harper & Row,
1975 & 1985) note that some people object to it.
The term "quality time", meaning "time spent in social
interaction with another person, especially one's young child",
dates from 1980. It is widely derided as faddish. "High-quality
time" is not used. In England, up-market, broadsheet newspapers
have been called "the quality papers" since 1961.
Other words that have acquired similarly specialized meanings
are: "fortune" meaning "good fortune" (dates from 1390, and had
precedent in Latin); "luck" meaning "good luck" (1480); "behave"
meaning "to behave properly" (1691); "criticize" meaning "to
criticize unfavourably" (1704); "temper" meaning "ill-temper, short
temper" (1828); "class" meaning "high class, elegance" (1874;
informal; originally a sports term; the term "class act" dates from
1976); "temperature" meaning "feverish temperature" (1898; informal;
an ironic development, since "temperature" once meant to be in
temper, to be free from the distemper that fever indicates); and
"attitude" meaning "hostile attitude" (1962; U.S. informal; probably
from such phrases as "You'd better change your attitude" and "I
don't like your attitude"). Context usually indicates the
specialized meaning, e.g., in "He has a temper"; one would have no
occasion to want to say, "He has a temper, but I'm not going to tell
you whether it's long or short or anything else about it."
Repeated words after abbreviations
Disputes occur about the legitimacy of placing after an acronym/
initialism the last word that is abbreviated in it, e.g., "AC
current", "the HIV virus". "AC" and "HIV" by themselves will
certainly suffice in most contexts. But such collocations tend to
become regarded as irreducible and uninterpretable words. "The
SNOBOL language" and "BASIC code" are as good as "the BASIC
language" and "SNOBOL code"; and why should "an LED display" (Light
Emitting Diode display) be reasonable, but not "an LCD display"
(Liquid Crystal Display display)? The extra word may guard against
ambiguity; e.g., "I've forgotten my PIN" might be mistaken in
speech as being about sewing, whereas "I've forgotten my PIN
number" identifies the context as ATMs.
"Scotch"
--------
Scots' preferred adjective for Scotland and for themselves is
"Scots". "Scottish" is also acceptable. But "Scotch" (although
used by Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and still used by some
Americans of Scots descent) is now considered offensive by many
Scots. Certain Scots hold that only three things can be "Scotch":
"Scotch whisky", "Scotch egg", and "Scotch mist". They are not
interested in considering additions to this list, although many
other terms containing "Scotch" can be found in dictionaries.
The term "Scotch tape" (a trademark for clear sticky tape made by
the 3M company, based in Minnesota) was originally a reference to
the stereotype of Scots miserliness. 3M at one time made a tape with
no adhesive along the middle. The tape was intended as a masking
tape for painting cars (masking off areas that you didn't want to
paint), so 3M thought it didn't need a full sticky coating; but
customers were not impressed.
"shall" vs "will", "should" vs "would"
The traditional rules for using these (based on the usage of
educated Southern Englishmen in the 18th and 19th centuries) are
quite intricate, and require some choices ("Should you like to see
London?"; "The doctor thought I should die") that are no longer
idiomatically reasonable. But if you're dead set on learning them,
you can access the relevant section of _The King's English_ at
<http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/fowler/213.html>. Usage
outside England has always been different: the old joke, where the
Irishman cries for help: "I will drown and no one shall save me"
and the Englishman mistakes this for a suicide resolution, is
contrived, in that an Irishman would far more likely say "no one
will save me."
split infinitive
----------------
Sir Ernest Gowers wrote in _The Complete Plain Words_ (HMSO,
1954): "The well-known [...] rule against splitting an infinitive
means that nothing must come between 'to' and the infinitive. It is
a bad name, as was pointed out by Jespersen [...] 'because we have
many infinitives without _to_, as "I made him go". _To_ therefore
is no more an essential part of the infinitive than the definite
article is an essential part of a substantive, and no one would think
of calling _the good man_ a split substantive.' It is a bad rule
too; it increases the difficulty of writing clearly [...]." The
split infinitive construction goes back to the 14th century, but was
relatively rare until the 19th. No split infinitives are to be
found in the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Pope, or Dryden, or in
the King James Version of the Bible.
Fowler wrote (in the article POSITION OF ADVERBS, in MEU) that
"to" + infinitive is "a definitely enough recognized verb-form to
make the clinging together of its parts the natural and normal
thing"; "there is, however, no sacrosanctity about that
arrangement". There are many considerations that should govern
placement of adverbs: there are other sentence elements, he said,
such as the verb and its object, that have a *stronger* affinity for
each other; but only avoidance of the split infinitive "has become
a fetish".
Thus, although in "I quickly hid it", the most natural place for
"quickly" is before "hid", "I am going to hide it quickly" is
slightly more natural than "I am going to quickly hide it". But "I
am going to quickly hide it" is itself preferable to "I am going
quickly to hide it" (splitting "going to" changes the meaning from
indicating futurity to meaning physically moving somewhere), or to
"I am going to hide quickly it" (separation of the verb from its
object). And even separating the verb from its object may become
the preferred place for the adverb if "it" is replaced by a long
noun phrase ("I am going to hide quickly any trace of our ever
having been here").
Phrases consisting of "to be" or "to have" followed by an adverb
and a participle are *not* split infinitives, and constitute the
natural word order. "To generally be accepted" and "to always have
thought" are split infinitives; "to be generally accepted" and "to
have always thought" are not.
Certain kinds of adverbs are characteristically placed before
"to". These include negative and restrictive adverbs: "not" ("To
be, or not to be"), "never", "hardly", "scarcely", "merely", "just";
and conjunctive adverbs: "rather", "preferably", "moreover",
"alternatively". But placing adverbs of manner in this position is
now considered good style only in legal English ("It is his duty
faithfully to execute the provisions...").
Clumsy avoidance of split infinitives often leads to ambiguity:
does "You fail completely to recognise" mean "You completely fail
to recognise", or "You fail to completely recognise"? Ambiguous
split infinitives are much rarer, but do exist: does "to further
cement trade relations" mean "to cement trade relations further",
or "to promote relations with the cement trade"?
The most frequently cited split infinitive is from the opening
voice-over of _Star Trek_: "to boldly go where no man has gone
before". (_Star Trek: The Next Generation_ had "one" in place of
"man".) Here, "boldly" modifies the entire verb phrase: the
meaning is "to have the boldness that the unprecedentedness of the
destinations requires". If "boldly" were placed after "go", it
would modify only "go", changing the meaning to "to go where no
man has gone before, and by the way, to go there boldly".
Hardly any serious commentator believes that infinitives should
never be split. The dispute is between those who believe that split
infinitives should be avoided when this can be done with no
sacrifice of clarity or naturalness, and those who believe that no
effort whatever should be made to avoid them.
"that" vs "which"
-----------------
In "The family that prays together stays together", the clause
"that prays together" is called a RESTRICTIVE CLAUSE because it
restricts the main statement to a limited class of family. In
"The family, which is the basic unit of human society, is
weakening", "which ... society" is called a NONRESTRICTIVE CLAUSE
because it makes an additional assertion about the family without
restricting the main statement.
It is generally agreed that nonrestrictive clauses should be
set off by commas; restrictive clauses, not. Nonrestrictive
clauses are now nearly always introduced by "which" or "who"
(although "that" was common in earlier centuries). Fowler
encourages us to introduce restrictive clauses with "that"; but this
is not a binding rule (although some copy-editors do go on "which
hunts"), and indeed is not possible if a preposition is to precede
the relative pronoun.
Object relative pronouns can be omitted altogether ("the book
that I read" or "the book I read"); in standard English, subject
relative pronouns cannot be omitted, although in some varieties
of informal spoken English, they are ("There's a man came into
the office the other day").
"that kind of a thing"
----------------------
The forms you're likely to encounter, in roughly decreasing
order of formality, are "that kind of thing", "those kinds of
things", "those kind of things", and "that kind of a thing". Sir
Ernest Gowers wrote: "it is as well to humour the purists by
writing _things of that kind_."
the the "hoi polloi" debate
---------------------------
Yes, "hoi" means "the" in Greek, but the first 5 citations in the
OED, and the most famous use of this phrase in English (in Gilbert
and Sullivan's operetta _Iolanthe_), put "the" in front of "hoi".
This is not a unique case: words like "alchemy", "alcohol",
"algebra", "alligator", and "lacrosse" incorporate articles from
other languages, but can still be prefixed in English with "the".
"The El Alamein battle" (which occurred in Egypt during World War
II), sometimes proffered as a phrase with three articles, actually
contains only two: _alamein_ is Arabic for "two flags" (which is
appropriate for a town on the border between Egypt and Libya), and
does not contain the Arabic article _al_.
"true fact"
-----------
Many phrases often criticized as "redundant" are redundant in
most contexts, but not in all. "Small in size" is redundant in most
contexts, but not in "Although small in size, the ship was large in
glory." "Consensus of opinion" is redundant in most contexts, but
not in "Some of the committee members were coerced into voting in
favour of the motion, so although the motion represents a consensus
of votes, it does not represent a consensus of opinion."
Context can negate part of the definition of a word. "Artificial
light" is light that is artificial (= "man-made"), but "artificial
flowers" are not flowers (i.e., genuine spermatophyte reproductive
orders) that are artificial. In the latter phrase, "artificial"
negates part of the definition of "flower". The bats known as
"false vampires" do not feed on blood: "false" negates part of the
definition of "vampire".
The ordinary definition of "fact" includes the idea of "true"
(e.g., fact vs fiction); the meaning of "fact" does have other
aspects (e.g., fact vs opinion). Context can negate the idea of
"true". Fowler himself used the phrase "Fowler's facts are wrong;
therefore his advice is probably wrong, too" (a conclusion that he
was eager to avert, moving him to defend his facts) in one of the
S.P.E. tracts.
It follows that "true fact" need not be a redundancy.
"whom"
------
In informal English, one can probably get away with using "who"
all the time, except perhaps after a preposition.
The prescription for formal English is: use "who" as the
subjective form (like "he"/"she"/ "they"), and "whom" as a direct or
indirect object (like "him"/ "her"/"them"):
He gave it to me. Who gave it to me? That's the man who
gave it to me.
I gave it to him. Whom did I give it to? That's the man
whom I gave it to.
I gave him a book. Whom did I give a book? That's the man
whom I gave a book.
Note the difference between:
I believe (that) he is drowned. Who do I believe is
drowned? That is the man who I believe is drowned.
and:
I believe him to be drowned. Whom do I believe to be
drowned? That is the man whom I believe to be drowned.
Note also, that unless you say "It is he", you cannot rely on these
transformations for complements of the verb "to be". You may say
"It's him", but the question is "Who is it?", definitely not "Whom
is it?"
The case of "whoever" is determined by its function in the
dependent clause that it introduces, not by its function in the main
clause: "I like whoever likes me." "Whomever I like likes me."
Very few English-speakers make these distinctions instinctively;
most of those who observe them learned them explicitly. Instincts
would lead them to select case based on word order rather than on
syntactic function. Hence Shakespeare wrote "Young Ferdinand,
whom they suppose is drowned". But Fowler called this a solecism in
modern English; it might be better to abstain from "whom" altogether
if one is not willing to master the prescriptive rules.
"you saying" vs "your saying"
In "You saying you're sorry alters the case", the subject of
"alters" is not "you", since the verb is singular. Fowler called
this construction the "fused participle", and recommended "Your
saying..." instead. The fused participle *can* lead to ambiguity:
does "Citizens participating helped the project" mean "Those
citizens who participated helped the project", or "The fact that
citizens participated helped the project"? (Placing commas
around "participating" would yield a third meaning.) Appending an
apostrophe to "citizens" would make the second meaning clear.
Other commentators have been less critical of the fused
participle than Fowler. Jespersen traced the construction as the
last in a series of developments where gerunds, which originally
functioned strictly as nouns, have taken on more and more verb-like
properties ("the showing of mercy" => "showing of mercy" => "showing
mercy"). Partridge defends the construction by citing lexical
noun-plus-gerund compounds. In most of these (e.g.,
"time-sharing"), the noun functions as the object of the gerund, but
in some recent compounds (e.g., "machine learning"), it functions as
the subject.
====================================================================
PUNCTUATION
-----------
"." after abbreviations
-----------------------
Fowler recommends putting a "." only after abbreviations that do
not include the last letter of the word they're abbreviating, e.g.,
"Capt." for captain but "Cpl" for corporal. In some English-
speaking countries, many people follow this rule, but not in the
U.S., where "Mr." and "Dr." prevail.
", vs ,"
--------
According to William F. Phillips (wfp@world.std.com), in the days
when printing used raised bits of metal, "." and "," were the most
delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of
type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above)
if they had a '"' on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence
the convention arose of always using '."' and ',"' rather than '".'
and '",', regardless of logic.
Fowler was a strong advocate of logical placement of punctuation
marks, i.e. only placing them inside the quotation marks if they
were part of the quoted matter. This scheme has gained ground,
and is especially popular among computer users, and others who
wish to make clear exactly what is and what is not being quoted.
Logical placement is accepted by many more publishers outside than
inside the U.S.
Some people insist that '."' and ',"' LOOK better, but Fowler
calls them "really mere conservatives, masquerading only as
aesthetes".
"A, B and C" vs "A, B, and C"
This is known as the "serial comma" dispute. Both styles are
common. The second style was recommended by Fowler, and is Oxford
University Press house style (hence it is also called "the Oxford
comma"; it is also known as "the Harvard comma"); it is more common
in the U.S. than elsewhere. Although either style may cause
ambiguity (in "We considered Miss Roberts for the roles of Marjorie,
David's mother, and Louise", are there two roles or three?), the
style that omits the comma is more likely to do so: "Tom, Peter, and
I went swimming." (Without the comma, one might think that the
sentence was addressed to Tom.) "I ordered sandwiches today. I
ordered turkey, salami, peanut butter and jelly, and roast beef."
Without that last comma, one would have a MIGHTY weird sandwich!
-- Gabe Wiener. James Pierce reports that an author whose custom it
was to omit the comma dedicated a novel: "To my parents, Ayn Rand
and God."
====================================================================
FOREIGNERS' FAQS
----------------
Non-native speakers are often unnecessarily cautious in their use
of English. Someone once posted to alt.usage.english from Japan,
asking, "What is the correct thing to say if one is being assaulted:
'Help!' or 'Help me!'?" Not only are they both correct; there was
a whole slew of responses asking, "Why the heck would you worry
about correctness at a time like that?"
It may happen that your post's greatest departure from English
idiom is something unrelated to what you are asking about. If you
like, say "Please correct any errors in this post"; otherwise, those
who answer you may out of politeness refrain from offering a
correction.
Although not so stratified as some languages, English does have
different stylistic levels. In a popular song, you may hear: "It
don't make much difference." When speaking to a friend, you will
probably want to say: "It doesn't make much difference." If you
are writing a formal report, you may want to render it as: "It
makes little difference." So it's helpful if when posting, you
specify the stylistic level that you're enquiring about.
If you prefer to make a query by e-mail, rather than posting to
the whole Net, you can send it to the Purdue University Online
Writing Lab. Send e-mail to "owl@sage.cc.purdue.edu". They also
have an ftp/gopher site, "owl.trc.purdue.edu", and a WWW page,
<http://owl.trc.purdue.edu/>. A popular and pleasant site for
getting grammar questions answered is the Lydbury Grammar Clinic:
<http://www.lydbury.co.uk/grammar/index.html>.
Another WWW page that may be of interest to learners of English
is The Comenius Group's Virtual English Language Center:
<http://comenius.port.net/index.html>. If you wish to improve your
English by exchanging e-mail with an English-speaker, you can post
a request to the newsgroup "soc.penpals". This is free (to you),
so you should not pay the fee for Comenius' "E-mail Key Pal
Connection".
An elementary grammar of English, designed primarily for French-
speakers but useful to all, can be found at
<http://www.hiway.co.uk/~ei/intro.html>. Other grammars are at
<http://www.edunet.com/english/grammar> and
<http://aix1.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/>.
The misc.education.language.english FAQ is maintained by Meg Gam
(teacher@dorsai.dorsai.org). At the moment, it lists resources of
interest to teachers (not students) of English as a foreign
language. If you can't find it in the standard FAQ places, send
Meg e-mail with the subject "m.e.l.e. FAQ" and no text.
There are some mailing lists that are primarily for people
studying English as a foreign language: CHAT-SL (general
discussion), DISCUSS-SL (advanced general discussion), BUSINESS-SL
(business and economics), ENGL-SL (discussion about learning
English), EVENT-SL (current events), MOVIE-SL (movies), MUSIC-SL
(music), SCITECH-SL (science, technology, and computers), and
SPORT-SL (sports). To subscribe to any of these lists, send a
message to majordomo@latrobe.edu.au with, for example, "subscribe
DISCUSS-SL" as the body of the message.
Roger Depledge writes: "since you rightly show some concern for
the non-native speaker, you might care to consider adding to your
list of dictionaries the _Collins Cobuild English Dictionary_
(HarperCollins, 2nd ed., 1995, ISBN 0-00-379401-8), all of whose
plentiful examples come from their 200-million-word corpus. As a
freelance translator in Toulouse, I find it invaluable when my
native ear for English fails me. And for usage for the non-
specialist, I know of none better than Michael Swan, _Practical
English Usage_ (OUP, 2nd ed., 1995, ISBN 0-19-431197-X). In its
favour I would cite the 26 reprints of the 1980 edition, and the six
pages on taboo words, including the priceless example, 'Bugger me!
There's Mrs Smith. I thought she was on holiday.'"
Anno Siegel recommends _The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of
English_, by Morton Benson, Evelyn Benson, and Robert Ilson,
Benjamins, 1986, ISBN 90-272-2036-0.
"a"/"an" before abbreviations
"A" is used before words beginning with consonants; "an", before
words beginning with vowels. This is determined by sound, not
spelling ("a history", "an hour", "a unit", "a European", "a one").
Formerly, "an" was usual before unaccented syllables beginning with
"h" ("an historian", "an hotel"); these are "now obsolescent" in
British English (Collins English Dictionary), although "an
historian" is retained in more dialects than "an hotel".
Before abbreviations, the choice of "a"/"an" depends on how
the abbreviation is pronounced: "a NATO spokesman" (because "NATO"
is pronounced /'neItoU/); "an NBC spokesman" (because "NBC" is
pronounced /Enbi'si/) "a NY spokesman" (because "NY" is read as
"New York (state)").
A problem: how can a foreigner *tell* whether a particular
abbreviation is pronounced as a word or not? Two non-foolproof
guidelines:
(1) It's more likely to be an acronym if it *looks* as if it could
be an English word. "NATO" and "scuba" do; "UCLA" and "NAACP"
don't.
(2) It's more likely to be an acronym if it's a *long* sequence of
letters. "US" is short; "EBCDIC" is too bloody long to say as
"E-B-C-D-I-C". (But of course, abbreviations that can be broken
down into groups, like "TCP/IP" and "AFL-CIO", are spelled out
because the groups are short enough.)
Is it "a FAQ" or "an FAQ"? These days, probably the former,
although some of us do say "an F-A-Q".
"A number of..."
----------------
"A number of ..." usually requires a plural verb. In "A number
of employees were present", it's the employees who were present, not
the number. "A number of" is just a fuzzy quantifier. ("A number
of..." may need a singular in the much rarer contexts where it does
not function as a quantifier: "A number of this magnitude requires
5 bytes to store.")
On the other hand, "the number of..." always takes the singular:
"The number of employees who were present was small." Here, it's
the number that was small, not the employees.
When to use "the"
-----------------
This is often quite tricky for those learning English. The
basic rules can be found in the Purdue University Online Writing
Lab's WWW page titled "The Use and Non-Use of Articles":
<http://owl.trc.purdue.edu/Files/25.html>
(very brief), and in "An Overview of English Article Usage for
Speakers of English as a Second Language" by John R. Kohl of
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:
<http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/text/esl.html>
(You can obtain textual WWW pages by e-mail. Send e-mail to
"agora@www.undp.org" with, in this case,
"send http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/text/esl.html"
as the message body). The book _Three Little Words; A, An and The:
a Foreign Student's Guide to English_ by Elizabeth Claire (Delta,
1988, ISBN 0-937354-46-5) has been recommended.
The article "the" before a noun generally indicates one specific
instance of the object named. For example, "I went to the school"
refers to one school. (The context should establish which school
is meant.) Such examples have the same meaning in all English-
speaking countries.
The construct <preposition>, with no intervening article,
often refers to a state of being rather than to an instance
of the object named by the noun. The set of commonly used
preposition-noun combinations varies from one dialect to another.
Some examples are:
I went to bed = I retired for the night. Even if I had the
habit of sleeping on the floor, I would still say "I went
to bed" and not "I went to floor".
She is at university (U.K.) = She is in college (U.S.) = She
is a student, enrolled in a particular type of tertiary
institution. This sentence does not imply that she is now
physically present on the campus.
He was taken to hospital (U.K.) = He was hospitalized. (A
U.S. speaker might say "to the hospital" even if there
were several hospitals in the area.)
Subjunctive
-----------
Present Subjunctive
The present subjunctive is the same in form as the infinitive
without "to". This is also the same form as the present indicative,
except in the third person singular and in forms of the verb "to
be".
The present subjunctive is used:
(1) in third-person commands: "Help, somebody save me!" Most third-
person commands (although not those addressed to "somebody") are
now expressed with "let" instead. The following (current but
set) formulas would probably use "let" if they were being
coined today: "So be it"; "Manners be hanged!"; "... be
damned"; "Be it known that..."; "Far be it from me to...";
"Suffice it to say that..."
(2) in third person wishes. Most third-person wishes are now
prefixed with "may" instead, as would the following f