A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics Series)

Rating:
Summary: Still the most witty and sensible authority on language.
Review: Fowler's should be on the desk of everyone who writes. Not only are his explanations clear, many are so witty that the reader laughs out loud. This important book should be more than a resource. It should be picked up, flipped through, and read at random for the sheer enjoyment of Fowler's infectious love and knowledge of language. There is always something new to be learned, and you may come under the spell of the beauty and precision of the English language when used deftly.

Rating:
Summary: The standard to which all the others are compared
Review: It is somewhat amazing that this book, first published in 1926, is still in print. The language has changed quite a bit since then; thousands of words have been added, hundreds have gone obsolete, and hundreds more have had their meanings shaded; and of course many of Fowler's pronouncements are now merely echoes of battles long lost or won. Not only that, but two newer editions of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage have been published, the excellent second edition edited by Sir Ernest Gowers in 1965 (now ironically out of print while the original finds yet another printing), and the not so entirely well-received (but underrated in my opinion) third edition, edited and revised by R.W. Burchfield in 1996.

How to account for this phenomenon? Part of it is because Fowler's reputation only grew after his death as several generations of writers sang his praises and adhered to, or sometimes fussed about, his many dicta on usage questions both great and small. And as the years went by, and as the pages of his masterpiece gave way to wine stains and silverfish or the few remaining copies disappeared from libraries, he himself became a legend. Not everything he wrote is considered correct today, nor was it then. And sometimes the succinct yet magisterial little essays he wrote were followed by other little essays that were all but impenetrable, obtuse and somewhat overbearing. No matter. The good greatly outweighed the occasional misjudgment, and the education he afforded us remains.

Another part of the story is that there is something very properly English and wonderfully nostalgic about the man himself. He was a bit of a character who lied about his age and joined the army when he was 56-years-old to fight the Germans in the Great War (only to faint on the parade grounds), a man who earlier gave up a teaching career because he did not feel it was his responsibility to prepare a student for the seminary. More than anything, though, the fact that this book is still in demand is a testament to the high regard and affection felt by the literate public toward Fowler himself.

What Fowler knew and preached was that before we could presume to be literary artists or journalists or even authors of readable letters we must of necessity, if we are to be effective, be craftsmen. Central to his purpose was the belief that the right word in its proper place and context constituted the backbone and much of the muscle and sinew of forthright and effective writing. That belief along with Fowler's celebrated passion for the concise and the correct, and his intolerance of ignorance and humbug, coupled with his sometimes incomparable expression, long ago won him the undying respect and admiration of careful writers of the English language the world over.

But this is something of a problem. Since Fowler last set pen to page some seventy-one years ago (he died in 1933), the English language has changed and grown enormously. What was correct and effective then, as well as what was ineffective, offensively brash or downright ugly has in some cases become acceptable and even felicitous. So, like it or not, Fowler had to be updated, and of course there was no shortage of lexicographers, linguists, grammarians, journalists and others looking to do the job. Furthermore, the "Great Divide" between American English and British English needed to be explained, recorded, and codified. Some of the people who have joined in this enterprise over the years have been H. L. Mencken, Jens Jespersen, Margaret Nicholson, Dwight MacDonald, Bergen and Cornelia Evans, and more recently, Bryan A. Garner and R.W. Burchfield, and many others. I think all of them, if they looked over their shoulder would see upon the wall an especially sober portrait of Fowler passing silent judgment upon their protracted labors. Certainly on their desks would be this book.

So I recommend that you buy that very impressive book by Garner (Garner's Modern American Usage), especially if you are an American, or splurge for a copy of that underrated third edition edited by Burchfield, and that you consult them as well as this venerable authority. As you use the books you may compare and contrast and get a nice feel for where the language has been and where it is headed.

Rating:
Summary: The standard to which all the others are compared
Review: It is somewhat amazing that this book, first published in 1926, is still in print. The language has changed quite a bit since then; thousands of words have been added, hundreds have gone obsolete, and hundreds more have had their meanings shaded; and of course many of Fowler's pronouncements are now merely echoes of battles long lost or won. Not only that, but two newer editions of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage have been published, the excellent second edition edited by Sir Ernest Gowers in 1965 (now ironically out of print while the original finds yet another printing), and the not so entirely well-received (but underrated in my opinion) third edition, edited and revised by R.W. Burchfield in 1996.

How to account for this phenomenon? Part of it is because Fowler's reputation only grew after his death as several generations of writers sang his praises and adhered to, or sometimes fussed about, his many dicta on usage questions both great and small. And as the years went by, and as the pages of his masterpiece gave way to wine stains and silverfish or the few remaining copies disappeared from libraries, he himself became a legend. Not everything he wrote is considered correct today, nor was it then. And sometimes the succinct yet magisterial little essays he wrote were followed by other little essays that were all but impenetrable, obtuse and somewhat overbearing. No matter. The good greatly outweighed the occasional misjudgment, and the education he afforded us remains.

Another part of the story is that there is something very properly English and wonderfully nostalgic about the man himself. He was a bit of a character who lied about his age and joined the army when he was 56-years-old to fight the Germans in the Great War (only to faint on the parade grounds), a man who earlier gave up a teaching career because he did not feel it was his responsibility to prepare a student for the seminary. More than anything, though, the fact that this book is still in demand is a testament to the high regard and affection felt by the literate public toward Fowler himself.

What Fowler knew and preached was that before we could presume to be literary artists or journalists or even authors of readable letters we must of necessity, if we are to be effective, be craftsmen. Central to his purpose was the belief that the right word in its proper place and context constituted the backbone and much of the muscle and sinew of forthright and effective writing. That belief along with Fowler's celebrated passion for the concise and the correct, and his intolerance of ignorance and humbug, coupled with his sometimes incomparable expression, long ago won him the undying respect and admiration of careful writers of the English language the world over.

But this is something of a problem. Since Fowler last set pen to page some seventy-one years ago (he died in 1933), the English language has changed and grown enormously. What was correct and effective then, as well as what was ineffective, offensively brash or downright ugly has in some cases become acceptable and even felicitous. So, like it or not, Fowler had to be updated, and of course there was no shortage of lexicographers, linguists, grammarians, journalists and others looking to do the job. Furthermore, the "Great Divide" between American English and British English needed to be explained, recorded, and codified. Some of the people who have joined in this enterprise over the years have been H. L. Mencken, Jens Jespersen, Margaret Nicholson, Dwight MacDonald, Bergen and Cornelia Evans, and more recently, Bryan A. Garner and R.W. Burchfield, and many others. I think all of them, if they looked over their shoulder would see upon the wall an especially sober portrait of Fowler passing silent judgment upon their protracted labors. Certainly on their desks would be this book.

So I recommend that you buy that very impressive book by Garner (Garner's Modern American Usage), especially if you are an American, or splurge for a copy of that underrated third edition edited by Burchfield, and that you consult them as well as this venerable authority. As you use the books you may compare and contrast and get a nice feel for where the language has been and where it is headed.

Rating:
Summary: A unique reference book
Review: The historic quaintness of its grammar informs me and often makes me titter while reminding me of my birthright. No home should be without a copy no matter who the reader or their diction.

Rating:
Summary: An Authoratative Guide
Review: The idiomatic use of the English language needs a referee, and some referees are simply better than others. The "anything goes" motto of our times gives us uneven, illiterate, and occasionally brutal prose. This book helps block this inevitable slide into the lack of clarity and coherence. This second edition (cf., Third Edition) of "Modern English Usage" may strike some readers as arcane and archaic, because it is so restrictive in its prescriptions. Given the laxity of many our writers, the use of a strict disciplinarian in philology is a welcome resource.

Rating:
Summary: own it
Review: There is of course more than one reason for its popularity. But the dominant one is undoubtedly the idiosyncrasy of the author, which is revealed to an extent unusual in a 'dictionary'. -Sir Ernest Gowers, Preface to the Revised Edition

Here in the States we have our beloved Strunk & White to give us guidance on matters grammatical, and it remains an indispensable reference work, even in its original form. The British counterpart to Elements of Style is this unique work by H.W. Fowler, minimally revised and edited by Sir Ernest Gowers. It too remains useful, though many entries have grown dated, but it is so idiosyncratic and amusing that even the most obsolete of Fowler's rulings and admonitions are worth reading if for nothing more than simple amusement. Here are just a few of the more enjoyable ones that I found :

continental. 'Your mother,' said Mr. Brownlow to Mr. Monks in Oliver Twist, 'wholly given up to continental frivolities, had utterly forgotten the young husband ten years her junior.' This use of continental reflects the common belief in England that the Continent, especially France, offers unwonted opportunities for gaiety and self-indulgence. It persists in such expressions as c. Sunday, c. cabaret, now not necessarily in the pejorative sense intended by Mr. Brownlow but suggesting either envy or reprobation, or a mixture of both, according to the taste of the user. Such feelings toward what we suppose to be the continental way of life have no doubt changed with the mellowing of Victorian prudery, but are unlikely to disappear so long as we are not allowed to gamble where we please or to drink whenever we are so disposed.

paragraph. The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying to him: 'Have you got that? If so, I'll go on to the next point.' there can be no general rule about the most suitable length for a paragraph; a succession of very short ones is as irritating as very long ones are wearisome.

reactionary. 'Except for its technical scientific sense, to which it would be a mercy if it were confined, reactionary is a word so emotionally charged as to be little more than a term of abuse' (Evans). That is no less true of Britain than of America. The word derives its pejorative sense from the conviction, once firmly held but now badly shaken, that all progress is necessarily good.

split infinitive. The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; (5) those who know and distinguish.

1. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes.

As Sir Ernest says in the epigraph to this review, that's not a style we're used to finding in dictionaries.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of us, there's apparently a battle amongst lexicographers, of some years duration, over whether such usage manuals should be prescriptive or descriptive. If descriptive, they would merely describe what the masses have adopted as common usage. If prescriptive, the author tries to offer guidance and to influence future usage. Fowler seems, to at least this non-professional, to have struck a nice balance between the two. He certainly has pet peeves (more than a few) and quite forcefully argues for spellings and definitions which he feels ought to be either stuck to or adopted, but he is also sufficiently democratic to recognize that many of these struggles, though he might have favored a different result, had already been decided to his disfavor. Here is but one example :

contact. The use of c. as a verb (get into touch with) gave no little offence when it first appeared here from America. But convenience has prevailed over prejudice, and the dictionaries now give it full recognition : after all, it is an ancient and valuable right of the English people to turn their nouns into verbs when they are so minded.

Given this realistic attitude, one assumes he would have been able to gracefully handle the fact that many of his suggestions have gone unheeded.

At any rate, from what the reviewers have to say about the most recent version of the Modern English Usage, Fowler's successor, Robert Burchfield, would appear to have produced a work that is not only overly descriptive, but that tends to vacillate over certain usages, as if Burchfield is unwilling to have events prove his judgments wrong in the future. There is no such waffling in the original, and it is a much better book for the firmness of its author's often hilarious opinions. This is one of those books that belongs on every desk in the English-speaking world, alongside Strunk & White and the OED, you'll refer to it often, but browse for pleasure even more frequently.

GRADE : A+

Rating:
Summary: Editions
Review: This edition being sold is the second edition published in 1965, the 3rd edition has been out for some time, since 1996.

Rating:
Summary: A great reference but not for the faint of heart
Review: This work is witty and nearly unassailable, but I can't say that the uninitiated will find it accessible or as wine drinkers may say approachable. If you take pride in careful usage and want to make your writing precise, you can't go wrong here. If you've ever wondered how the words residence and residency both made their way into the language, the answer awaits you within these pages.

This isn't the place to get started with learning to write though. For those whose primary endeavor is not writing Strunk and White's Elements of Style or The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker will offer much to you on the practice of writing. These titles will also offer you many tips on constructing a piece of writing that you won't find in Fowler.

For those interested in a thorough treatment of usage and language you can't go wrong with Fowler though.

Rating:
Summary: A great reference but not for the faint of heart
Review: This work is witty and nearly unassailable, but I can't say that the uninitiated will find it accessible or as wine drinkers may say approachable. If you take pride in careful usage and want to make your writing precise, you can't go wrong here. If you've ever wondered how the words residence and residency both made their way into the language, the answer awaits you within these pages.

This isn't the place to get started with learning to write though. For those whose primary endeavor is not writing Strunk and White's Elements of Style or The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker will offer much to you on the practice of writing. These titles will also offer you many tips on constructing a piece of writing that you won't find in Fowler.

For those interested in a thorough treatment of usage and language you can't go wrong with Fowler though.

Rating:
Summary: The classic usage guide; everyone should have one
Review: Together with his and his brother's "The King's English," Fowler's "Modern English Usage" is the classic guide to writing good English. Those that say that Fowler is overly prescriptive are wrong; on the contrary, Fowler thinks less ill of split infinitives and prepositions-at-end than many more "modern" usage know-it-alls. I think that Fowler approaches writing in the English language as an engineer approaches designing a machine. The idea is "get the job done"---"how can I say this in the fewest words with the least ambiguity?" And that is what he teaches. Split infinitives aren't bad because they don't introduce ambiguity. The fused participle, on the other hand, introduces ambiguity, and should be avoided. "Good" Fowler English isn't just "proper" English, but English that is unambiguous and to the point.

Everyone that writes should have a copy of Fowler. But please, don't buy the "Third Edition," which isn't really Fowler. The second edition (edited by Gowers) is OK, but the first is really the nonpareil. The first edition is still in print (Wordsworth or a special Oxford reprint?) or you can buy it used---there are
lots of original Oxford University Press hardbacks floating around used here on Amazon[.com] that were pulled off high school shelves years ago.