H. W. Fowler

Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He often collaborated with his brother Francis George Fowler (1871–1918). Quotes The King's English (1906) Americanisms are foreign words, and should be so treated. Ch. 1, "Americanisms" In the details of divergence, they have sometimes had the better of us. Fall is better on the merits than autumn, in every way: it is short, Saxon (like the other three season names), picturesque; it reveals its derivation to every one who uses it, not to the scholar only, like autumn; and we once had as good a right to it as the Americans; but we have chosen to let the right lapse, and to use the word now is no better than larceny. Ch. 1, "Americanisms" Kipling...and his school are americanizing us. His style exhibits a sort of remorseless and scientific efficiency in the choice of epithets and other words that suggests the application of coloured photography to description; the camera is superseding the human hand. Ch. 1, "Americanisms" Every one knows an Americanism, at present, when he sees it; how long that will be true is a more anxious question. Ch. 1, "Americanisms" The difficulty is that some French, Latin, and other words are now also English, though the fiction that they are not is still kept up by italics and (with French words) conscientious efforts at pronunciation. Ch. 1, "Foreign Words" What a writer effects by using these ornaments is to make us imagine him telling us he is a wise fellow and one that hath everything handsome about him, including a gentlemanly acquaintance with the French language. Ch. 1, "Foreign Words" Is the function of newspapers to force upon us against our will the buying of French dictionaries? Ch. 1, "Foreign Words" Modern English Usage I think of it as it should have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truth multiplied. He had a nimbler wit, a better sense of proportion, and a more open mind, than his twelve-year-older partner. [speaking of his deceased brother] 1926 First edition, p. iii Didacticism - The speaker who has discovered that Juan and Quixote are not pronounced in Spain as he used to pronounce them as a boy is not content to keep so important a piece of information to himself; he must have the rest of us call them Hwan and Keehotay; at any rate he will give us the chance of mending our ignorant ways by doing so. 1965 Second edition French Words - Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth - greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners. 1965 Second edition Inversion - Writers who observe the poignency sometimes given by inversion, but fail to observe that 'sometimes' means 'when exclamation is appropriate', adopt inversion as a infallible enlivener; they aim at freshness and attain frigidity. 1965 Second edition Split Infinitive - The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitve is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. 1926 First edition, p. 558 Terribly - It is strange that a people with such a fondness for understatement as the British should have felt the need to keep changing the adverbs by which they hope to convince listeners of the intensity of their feelings. 1965 Second edition External links Category:1858 births Category:1933 deaths Category:Non-fiction authors from England Category:People educated at Rugby School Category:University of Oxford alumni Category:People from Kent Category:Lexicographers