📗 Libro en inglés A DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE

Over 75 years old, this classic text has become the standard work on the correct but natural use of English and has ensured that Fowler is a household name. Written in Fowler''s inimitable style, it gives clear guidance on usage, word formation, inflexion, spelling, pronunciation, punctuation, and typography. Rewritten, updated, and expanded to take into account the vast linguistic changes of the past three-quarters of a century, here are thousands of alphabetically-arranged entries, offering advice and background information on all aspects of the English language, from grammar to spelling to literary style. Witty and practical, and renowned for its authority, Fowler''s Modern English Usage remains an invaluable guide to the English language. The first place to turn for sensible advice on the thorny issues of grammar, meaning, and pronunciation, ''Fowler'' is one of those rare reference books that can also be read simply for pleasure. This new edition includes an introduction by Simon Winchester, which gives the book a modern perspective and confirms its importance in literature. A guide to precise phrases, grammar, and pronunciation can be key; it can even be admired. But beloved? Yet from its first appearance in 1926, Fowler''s was just that. Henry Watson Fowler initially aimed his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, as he wrote to his publishers in 1911, at ''the half-educated Englishman of literary proclivities who wants to know Can I say so-&-so?'' He was of course obsessed with, in Swift''s phrase, ''proper words in their proper places.'' But having been a schoolmaster, Fowler knew that liberal doses of style, wit, and caprice would keep his manual off the shelf and in writers'' hands. He also felt that description must accompany prescription, and that advocating pedantic ''superstitions'' and ''fetishes'' would be to no one''s advantage. Adepts will have their favorite inconsequential entries--from burgle to brood, truffle to turgid. Would that we could quote them all, but we can''t resist a couple. Here Fowler lays into dedicated: He is that rara avis a dedicated boxer. The sporting correspondent who wrote this evidently does not see why the literary critics should have a monopoly of this favourite word of theirs, though he does not seem to think that i