THE KING'S ENGLISH

By

H. W. FOWLER

BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

PREFACE

SECOND EDITION

No levell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold. Timon of Athens, I. i. 48.

CONTENTS

PART I

Chapter I. Vocabulary

General Principles Familiar and far-fetched words Concrete and abstract expression Circumlocution Short and long words Saxon and Romance words Requirements of different styles Malaprops Neologisms

Americanisms Foreign words Formation Slang Individual Mutual Unique Aggravate

Chapter II. Syntax
Case Number Comparatives and superlatives Relatives Defining and non-defining relative clauses That and who or which And who, and which Case of the relative Miscellaneous uses of the relative It ... that Participle and gerund Participles The gerund Distinguishing the gerund Omission of the gerund subject Choice between gerund and infinitive	Shall and will The pure system The coloured-future system The plain-future system Second-person questions Examples of principal sentences Substantival clauses Conditional clauses Indefinite clauses Examples of subordinate clauses Perfect infinitive Conditionals Doubt that Prepositions

Chapter III. Airs and Graces
Certain types of humour Elegant variation Inversion Exclamatory Balance In syntactic clauses Negative, and false-emphasis Miscellaneous	Archaism Occasional Sustained Metaphor Repetition Miscellaneous Trite phrases Irony Superlatives without the Cheap originality

Chapter IV. Punctuation

General difficulties General principles The spot plague Over-stopping Under-stopping Grammar and punctuation Substantival clauses Subject, &c., and verb Adjectival clauses Adverbial clauses Parenthesis Misplaced commas Enumeration Comma between independent sentences Semicolon with subordinate members Exclamations and statements Exclamations and questions Internal question and exclamation marks Unaccountable commas

The colon Miscellaneous Dashes General abuse Legitimate uses Debatable questions Common misuses Hyphens Quotation marks Excessive use Order with stops Single and double Misplaced Half quotation

PART II Some less important chapters had been designed on Euphony, Ambiguity, Negligence, and other points. But as the book would with them have run to too great length, some of the examples have been simply grouped here in independent sections, with what seemed the minimum of comment.
Euphony Jingles Alliteration Repeated prepositions Sequence of relatives Sequence of that, &c. Metrical prose Sentence accent Causal as clauses Wens and hypertrophied members Careless repetition	Quotation, &c. Common misquotations Uncommon misquotations of well-known passages Misquotation of less familiar passages Misapplied and misunderstood quotations and phrases Allusion Incorrect allusion Dovetailed and adapted quotations and phrases Trite quotation Latin abbreviations, &c.
Grammar Unequal yokefellows and defective double harness Common parts The wrong turning Ellipse in subordinate clauses Some illegitimate infinitives Split infinitives Compound passives Confusion with negatives Omission of as Other liberties taken with as Brachylogy Between two stools The impersonal one Between ... or A placed between the adjective and its noun Do as substitute verb Fresh starts Vulgarisms and colloquialisms	Meaning Tautology Redundancies As to whether Superfluous but and though If and when Maltreated idioms Truisms and contradictions in terms Double emphasis Split auxiliaries Overloading Demonstrative, noun, and participle or adjective Ambiguity False scent Misplacement of words Ambiguous position Ambiguous enumeration
Style
Antics Journalese Somewhat, &c. Clumsy patching	Omission of the conjunction that Meaningless while Commercialisms Pet Phrases Also as conjunction; and &c.