Sir Ernest Gowers
English civil servant, lawyer, and writer
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The old-fashioned grammarian certainly has much to answer for. He created a false sense of values that still lingers. I have ample evidence in my own correspondence that too much importance is still attached to grammarians' fetishes and too little to choosing the right words. But we cannot have grammar jettisoned altogether; that would mean chaos. There are certain grammatical conventions that are, so to speak, a code of good manners. They change, but those current at the time must be observed by writers who wish to express themselves clearly and without offence to their readers.
—Sir Ernest Gowers, English civil servant, lawyer, and writer, The Complete Plain Words, 1954
Posted on October 29, 2003 at 1:48 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In Modern English Usage Fowler makes an elaborate study of the hyphen. He begins engagingly by pointing out that "superfluous hair-remover" can only mean a hair-remover that nobody wants, and he proceeds to work out a code of rules for the proper use of the hyphen. He admits that the result of following his rules "will often differ from current usage". But, he adds, "that usage is so variable as to be better named caprice". The author of the style-book of the Oxford University Press of New York (quoted in Perrin's Writer's Guide) strikes the same note when he says "If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad".
I have no intention of taking hyphens seriously. Those who wish to do so I leave to Fowler's eleven columns.
—Sir Ernest Gowers, English civil servant, lawyer, and writer, The Complete Plain Words, 1954
Posted on October 8, 2002 at 3:18 PM
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