Fowler's Modern English Usage Pdf Free Download
Mirthe Luria
In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry W. Fowler's general approach encourages a direct, vigorous writing style, and opposes all artificiality, by firmly advising against convoluted sentence construction, the use of foreign words and phrases, and the use of archaisms. He opposed pedantry, and ridiculed artificial grammar rules unwarranted by natural English usage, such as bans on ending a sentence with a preposition, rules on the placement of the word only, and rules distinguishing between which and that. He classified and condemned every clich, in the course of which he coined and popularised the terms battered ornament, vogue words, and worn-out humour, while defending useful distinctions between words whose meanings were coalescing in practice, thereby guiding the speaker and the writer away from illogical sentence construction, and the misuse of words. In the entries "Pedantic Humour" and "Polysyllabic Humour" Fowler mocked the use of arcane words (archaisms) and the use of unnecessarily long words.
I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied. He had a nimbler wit, a better sense of proportion, and a more open mind, than his twelve-year-older partner; and it is a matter of regret that we had not, at a certain point, arranged our undertakings otherwise than we did. ... This present book accordingly contains none of his actual writing; but, having been designed in consultation with him, it is the last fruit of a partnership that began in 1903 with our translation of Lucian.
The modernisation of A Dictionary of English Usage (1926) yielded the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (1999), edited by the lexicographer Robert Allen, which is based upon Burchfield's 1996 edition; the modernised edition is a forty per cent abridgement realised with reduced-length entries and the omission of about half the entries of the 1996 edition.[12] A second edition of Allen's "Pocket Fowler" was published in 2008, the content of which the publisher said "harks back to the original 1926 edition".[13]
Far from it. The book is international in scope, providing in-depth coverage of both British and American English usage, while referring also to the Englishes of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa.
One of the joys for me as editor were the thousands of authentic examples that vividly demonstrate how modern writers tackle debated usage issues. These examples are culled on the one hand from literary figures such as Chinua Achebe, Peter Ackroyd, Raymond Carver, Iris Murdoch, Harold Pinter, Vikram Seth, and dozens of others.
On the other hand, they are drawn from a vast range of newspapers, journals, books, broadcast material, websites, and other digital sources from across the globe. Some even include references to topical personalities such as Stephen Fry, Prince Harry, Jeremy Paxman, and Wayne Rooney.
Everyone who needs authoritative, comprehensive, and reasoned guidance on questions of English usage: journalists, broadcasters, authors, academics, high-level English teachers, English-language learners, philologists, editors, and general readers with an interest in the correct usage of English.
But to make two important points about Lowth: he did not write his grammar as a bishop, for the grammar was published in 1762 (he had started it in 1757, and it was finished in 1761, so yes, he does seem to have written it in his spare time), and he became bishop of Oxford in 1766 and bishop of London in 1777. Before he was nominated bishop of Oxford, the grammar had already gone through five editions!
Another common misconception is that Lowth is usually prescriptive in his approach to grammar and usage. His discussion of preposition stranding neatly illustrates that this is not the case. The way he phrases the stricture (very carefully!) also coincides with his own usage in the diferent styles of his private letters, so it was most definitely a descriptive rule. The stricture was only made more prescriptive by his followers, such as Lindley Murray (1795), who copies Lowth verbatim and then adds "but it is better to ..."!
Lowth Short Introduction was a proper grammar, not a usage guide, though this was how his readers made use of it and how modern linguists tend to see it. The first usage guide was written by Robert Baker, in 1770, so well after Lowth, but Baker never read the grammar. It is a completely independent work, and shows that the two movements (grammars vs. usage guides) were quite distinct.
Very nice, but Fowler didn't invent the that/which rule. The earliest source I know of this rule is the mid-19th century grammarian Goold Brown. Alfred Ayres also was quite enchanted by it, to the extent of going back and "correcting" his edition of Cobbett's grammar from the early 19th century. Fowler undoubtedly is responsible for popularizing the rule, but it was not of his creation.Richard Hershberger
3. His book has only one problem. The only thing wrong with his book is that you can't find the thing you want. To fix this problem, I read every word of it and wrote an index. I am one of the few who can put my finger on "aviatrix" straight away.
It has about 11,000 entries, but it's not a comprehensive index. It certainly helps you find a word that's not already a headword. So, my "index" does not list "double passives" because Fowler already has an article calledthat. But it does list "clergyman" because that word does not appear under "c" in Fowler.
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