Bill Bryson
American writer, editor, and journalist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Mother Tongue, 1990
Posted on September 27, 1999 at 10:53 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin -- a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Mother Tongue, 1990
Posted on November 11, 1999 at 8:28 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
For most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right. Is it reasonable to expect the test of us to?
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, Troublesome Words, 1984
Posted on December 15, 2000 at 10:55 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, Troublesome Words, 1984
Posted on June 7, 2000 at 7:06 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Even the most ardent structuralist would concede that there must be at least some conventions of usage. Otherwise we might as well spell fish (as George Bernard Shaw once wryly suggested) as ghoti: 'gh' as in tough, 'o' as in women, 'ti' as in motion.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, Troublesome Words, 1984
Posted on October 7, 1998 at 9:35 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
To be fair, English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Mother Tongue, 1990
Posted on August 21, 1998 at 11:35 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Some writers continue to insist that prestigious can properly describe only that which is deceptive or illusory because the word comes from the Latin praestigiae, meaning 'juggler's tricks'....To try to defend the stricter meaning now on grounds of etymology is rather like insisting that 'silly' must, because of its derivation, mean happy and holy or that a villain is someone who works in a villa or that 'nice' should describe only those who are ignorant and unaware.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, Troublesome Words, 1984
Posted on February 19, 1999 at 11:07 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, 1989
Posted on July 5, 2002 at 8:14 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It is true that English was immeasurably enriched by the successive linguistic waves that washed over the British Isles. But it is probably closer to the truth to say that the language we speak today is rich and expressive not so much because new words were imposed on it as because they were welcomed.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Mother Tongue, 1990
Posted on January 23, 2002 at 6:40 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
We have a deep-rooted delight in the comic effect of words in English, and not just in advertising jingles but at the highest level of endeavor.
—Bill Bryson, American writer, editor, and journalist, The Mother Tongue, 1990
Posted on October 30, 2002 at 6:47 AM
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