H. W. Fowler
British lexicographer and schoolmaster
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
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. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes.
—H. W. Fowler, British lexicographer and schoolmaster, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition, 1965
Posted on April 7, 2004 at 8:56 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A feature of the second Elizabethan age, as of the first, is that new words proliferate. One way of making them is to add the suffix -ize to a noun or adjective, and so increase our stock of verbs. . . . Most verbs in -ize are inelegant. Sir Alan Herbert has compared them to lavatory fittings, useful in their proper place but not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary for practical purposes.
—H. W. Fowler, British lexicographer and schoolmaster, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926
Posted on July 5, 2000 at 10:38 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The assumption that puns are per se contemptible, betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as a pun, but as a bad pun or a feeble pun, is a sign at once of sheepish docility and desire to seem superior. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact.
—H. W. Fowler, British lexicographer and schoolmaster, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926
Posted on December 21, 1998 at 6:15 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.
—H. W. Fowler, British lexicographer and schoolmaster, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926
Posted on May 10, 2001 at 1:58 PM
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