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"The Cambridge Guide to English Usage The Cambridge Guide to English Usage is an A–Z reference book, giving an up-to-date account of the debatable issues of English usage and written style. Its advice draws a wealth of recent research and data from very large corpora of American and British English – illuminating their many divergences and also points of convergence on which international English can be based. The book comprises more than 4000 points of word meaning, spelling, grammar, punctuation and larger issues of inclusive language, and effective writing and argument. It also provides guidance on grammatical terminology, and covers topics in electronic communication and the internet. The discussion notes the major dictionaries, grammars and usage books in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, allowing readers to calibrate their own practices as required. CGEU is descriptive rather than prescriptive, but offers a principled basis for implementing progressive or more conservative decisions on usage. Consultants JOHN ALGEO University of Georgia University of Surrey University of Wales, Bangor Fellow of the Dictionary Society of North America University of Leeds JOHN AYTO DAVID CRYSTAL SIDNEY LANDAU KATIE WALES The Cambridge Guide to English Usage PAM PETERS Macquarie University cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521621816 © Cambridge University Press 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 isbn-10 isbn-13 isbn-10 978-0-511-19563-1 eBook (NetLibrary) 0-511-19563-x eBook (NetLibrary) 978-0-521-62181-6 hardback 0-521-62181-x hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents Preface vii x Overview of Contents and How to Access Them A to Z Entries Appendix I 1–592 International Phonetic Alphabet Symbols for English Sounds 593 594 595 596 Appendix II Appendix III Appendix IV Appendix V Geological Eras Perpetual Calendar 1901–2008 International System of Units (SI Units) Interconversion Tables for Metric and Imperial Measures 597 598 Appendix VI Appendix VII Selected Proofreading Marks Formats and Styles for Letters, Memos and E-mail 600 602 603 Appendix VIII Appendix IX Layout for Envelopes Currencies of the World Bibliography 604 v Preface The Cambridge Guide to English Usage is written for English-users in the twenty-ﬁrst century It takes a fresh look at thousands of questions of style and . usage, embracing issues that are time-honored yet still current, as well as those newly arising as the language continues to evolve. Some of these come with electronic communication and online documentation, but there are numerous others among the more than 4000 headwords in the book. At the threshold of the third millennium, English is more diverse than ever in all hemispheres. Research into “new Englishes” has ﬂourished, supported by journals such as English World-Wide, World Englishes and English Today. At the same time, the quest for a single, international form for written communication becomes more pressing, among those aiming at a global readership. This book is designed to support both global and local communicators. It identiﬁes regionalized elements of usage, grammar and style, with systematic attention to American and British English, and reference to Canadian, Australian and New Zealand English as well. It allows writers to choose styles and usage appropriate to their readership, according to how local or large it is. The local options help to establish and afﬁrm regional identity within, say, North America or Great Britian. But communicating beyond those regions calls for reappraisal of the options, putting a premium on those with the widest distribution worldwide, ideally region-free. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage identiﬁes “international English selections” wherever they can be distilled out of the alternatives available, and implements them on its own pages. It empowers readers (as writers, editors, teachers, students) to choose and develop their own style, for their particular purposes. Many kinds of resource have been brought to bear on the style and usage questions raised. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage is the ﬁrst of its kind to make regular use of large databases (corpora) of computerized texts as primary sources of current English. Numerous examples of British usage have come from the 100 million word British National Corpus (see BNC); and of American usage from a subset of 140 million words of American English from the Cambridge International Corpus (see CCAE). The corpora embody various kinds of written discourse as well as transcriptions of spoken discourse – enough to show patterns of divergence between the two. Negative attitudes to particular idioms or usage often turn on the fact that they are more familiar to the ear than the eye, and the constructions of formal writing are privileged thereby Corpus data allow us to . look more neutrally at the distributions of words and constructions, to view the range of styles across which they operate. On this basis we can see what is really “standard,” i.e. usable in many kinds of discourse, as opposed to the formal or informal. References to “formal” and “informal” within the book presuppose that they lie above and below the broad band of everyday written communication, and together form a three-point stylistic scale. vii Preface The relative acceptability of a given usage can also be gauged by means of population surveys. This involves the use of questionnaires on doubtful or disputed usage in spelling, punctuation, the use of capital letters and certain points of grammar. A series of six questionnaires called the “Langscape survey” was published in English Today (1998–2001), with the support of the editor, Dr. Tom McArthur. Hundreds of questionnaires from around the world were returned by mail and fax, and through the Style Council website at Macquarie University, where they were analyzed in terms of regional and sociolinguistic trends. Results from Langscape are quoted in some of the book’s entries for their insights into people’s willingness to embrace particular spellings or usages. They are a litmus test of future directions. Attitudes to usage often reﬂect what’s said in the relevant language authorities, most notably the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, 1989) for British English, and Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (3rd edition, 1961, reprinted 1986) for American English. These unabridged dictionaries remain monuments to English language scholarship, to which we are all indebted. Though their latest editions are not so recent, their positions tend to be maintained in younger, abridged dictionaries, except where there are good reasons to diverge, e.g. on neologisms or previously unrecorded usage. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate (2000) have been used to update the verdicts of the unabridged dictionaries, where relevant; and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (1998) and the Macquarie Dictionary (3rd edition 1997) are invoked for regional comparisons. Comparative reference is also made to regional usage books, including Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926; and later editions by Gowers, 1965, and Burchﬁeld, 1996); to the excellent Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1989), Garner’s Modern American Usage (1999), and Fee and McAlpine’s Canadian English Usage (1997). These secondary sources contribute to the diversity of views on changing usage, and articulate local reactions to worldwide innovations. Issues of editorial style are also treated comparatively, to allow readers to position themselves relative to American or British style, as articulated in the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition 2003) and the Oxford Guide to Style (2002). Reference is also made to Editing Canadian English (2nd edition 2000) by the Editors’ Association of Canada, to the Australian government Style Manual (6th edition 2002), and to the New Zealand style manual Write, Edit, Print (1997). Those resident in non-English-speaking countries can forge a synthesis of regional styles appropriate to their readerships. Grammatical cruxes of usage are discussed with reference to modern grammars such as the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), the Introduction to Functional Grammar (1985; 1994) and especially the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999). The latter is explicitly corpus-based, using data from the Longman corpus of over 40 million words in six registers, to complement or extend the data derived from the BNC and CCAE, mentioned above. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage aims to bridge the gap between traditional and modern grammar, and uses terminology from both (e.g. mood and modality) as entry points to discussing grammatical questions. Elements of discourse analysis are also discussed, for example information focus and sentence topic, as aids to writing and editing. viii Preface Apart from its large range of primary and secondary sources, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage draws on the ﬁndings of numerous linguistic researchers, named within the text and in the bibliography Their contributions to our . understanding of the intricacies of the English language are legion. Many are corpus linguists associated with the ICAME group (International Computer Archive of Modern English), who have progressively developed the uses of corpora for linguistic description with each new generation of corpus. Other European and American linguists who have contributed greatly to this book are the distinguished consultants named on p. ii, whose careful reading of the MS has enhanced its relevance to different parts of the English-speaking world. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage also owes much to undated and undatable discussions with colleagues and friends at Macquarie University, in the Linguistics department and associated with the Macquarie Dictionary. To Professor Arthur Delbridge, the foundation Professor of Linguistics and Editor-in-chief of the Dictionary who connected me with both, I owe a particular debt of gratitude. Others who provided invaluable support for the publication of the prototype Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (1995) were Dr. Robin Derricourt (formerly of Cambridge University Press, Australia), and Hon. Justice Michael Kirby (of the High Court of Australia). In the preparatory stages of The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, I was fortunate to be a visiting professor at the Englisches Seminar of the University of Zurich, which gave me access to their ¨ excellent BNC search tools and experience of teaching at a European university . Many thanks are due to those at Cambridge University Press (UK) who saw the project through from ﬁrst to last: Adrian du Plessis, Kevin Taylor and Dr Kate Brett, and my copy-editor Leigh Mueller. Back home in Australia my warmest thanks go to my family, to Fliss, Greg, and especially to John, for his unfailing love and support. Pam Peters ix Overview of Contents and How to Access Them The alphabetical list in this book contains two kinds of entries: those which deal with general topics of language, editing and writing, and those dealing with particular words, word sets or parts of words. An overview of many general entries is provided on the opposite page. The particular entries, focusing on issues of usage, spelling and word form, are too numerous to be shown there, and simply take their places in the alphabetical list. But for many questions, either general or particular entries would lead you to the answer you’re seeking, and the book offers multiple access paths via crossreferences. Let’s say you are interested in where to put the full stop in relation to a ﬁnal bracket or parenthesis. Any of those terms (full stop, bracket, parenthesis) would take you to the relevant discussion under brackets. In addition the general entry on punctuation presents a list of all the entries dealing with individual punctuation marks, for both words and sentences. Questions of grammar are accessible through traditional terms such as noun and verb, clause and phrase, and traditional labels such as dangling participle or split inﬁnitive . . . though the entries may lead you on to newer linguistic topics such as information focus and modality. Aspects of writing and argument (when is it OK to use I? what does it mean to beg the question?) are discussed under their particular headings, but can also be tracked down through more general ones such as impersonal writing and argument. If your question is about current use of a word such as hopefully, or a pair such as alternate and alternative, or gourmet and gourmand, the discussion is to be found under those headwords. When it’s a question of spelling, e.g. convener or convenor, the individual entry may answer it, and/or direct you on to another (-er/-or) where a whole set with the same variable part is dealt with. In the same way, the entry -ize/-ise discusses the alternative spellings of countless verbs like recognise/recognize, although there are too many to enter alphabetically The key spelling entries are listed under spelling sections 2 and 3, . in case you’re unsure what heading to look under. Alternative plural forms can be located via the entry on plurals. As in the text above, the use of boldface means that the word is entered as a headword, and it identiﬁes all crossreferences at the end of entries. Within any entry, further instances of the headword(s) are often boldfaced to draw attention to strategic points about them. Words related to the headword(s) or derived from them are set in italics, as are all examples. ♦ Abbreviations used in the body of the text are explained at their alphabetical place. x Overview of Contents and How to Access Them STYLE AND STRUCTURE OF WRITING ARGUMENT & STRUCTURE OF DISCOURSE Argument Beg the question Coherence or cohesion Deduction RHETORICAL DEVICES Fallacies Information focus Analogy Introductions Aphorism Paragraphs Figures of speech Topic sentences Irony Metaphors Oxymoron Personification Symbols Understatements SPECIAL STYLES Commercialese Digital style Impersonal style Jargon Journalese Plain English Technologese VARIETIES OF ENGLISH American English Australian English British English Canadian English International English New Zealand English South African English Standard English WRITING FORMS E-mail Inverted pyramid Letter writing Narrative Reports Summary WORDS FORMS OF WORDS Acronyms and initialisms Affixes, prefixes, suffixes Compounds Past tense Plurals Proper names Zero forms SPELLING SPECIAL EXPRESSIONS Clichés Emoticons Foreign phrases Four-letter words Geographical names Intensifiers WORD MEANINGS & SENSE RELATIONS Antonyms Euphemisms Folk etymology Hyponyms Synonyms USAGE DISTINCTIONS Collocations Near-but-not-identical words Reciprocal words Alternative spellings: ae/e i/y -ize/-ise l/ll oe -or/-our -re/-er yze/yse Spelling rules: -c/-ck- ce/-ge -e -f >-v- -o -y > -i-, doubling of final consonant, i before e EDITORIAL STYLE EDITORIAL TECHNIQUE Abbreviations Audiovisual media Bibliographies Dating systems Indexing Lists Prelims Proofreading Referencing Titles INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE Ageist language Disabled Miscegenation Nonsexist language Racist language PUNCTUATION Apostrophes Brackets Bullets Colon Comma Dashes Full stop/period Hyphens Question marks Quotation marks Semicolon TYPOGRAPHY Accents Capital letters Dates Headings Indention Italics Numbers and number style GRAMMAR GRAMMATICAL ISSUES Agreement Dangling participles Double negatives First person Modality Nonfinite clause Restrictive clause Split infinitive Whom WORD CLASSES Adjectives Adverbs Conjunctions Determiners Interjections Nouns Prepositions Pronouns Verbs xi A @ This is a symbol in search of a name. English-speakers call @ the “at sign,” which will do while it serves as the universal symbol of an e-mail address. Its shape is also used along with other emoticons to represent expressions of the human face (see emoticons). But its resemblance to animals emerges through ad hoc names in other languages. In Danish, it’s seen as the “elephant’s trunk,” and in Chinese as “little mouse.” Russian has it as “little dog,” Swedish as “cat’s foot,” and Dutch as “monkey’s tail.” The best consensus is for “snail,” which provides a name for @ in French, Italian, Hebrew and Korean. ♦ On quoting e-mail addresses, see under URL. would preface hotel and heroic with an rather than a, despite pronouncing the h at the start of those words. Other polysyllabic words beginning with h will be given the same treatment, especially if their ﬁrst syllable is unstressed. In both American and British English the words historic, historical and historian are the most frequent of these exceptional cases, but the tendency goes further in Britain, by the evidence of matching databases (LOB and Brown corpora). They show that British writers use an to preface adjectives such as habitual, hereditary, heroic, horriﬁc, hypothetical, hysterical (and their adverbs) as well as the noun hotel. There are far fewer examples in the American data, and the only distinctive case is herb, which is commonly pronounced without h in the US (though not in the UK or elsewhere). The King James bible (1611) records the use of an with other monosyllabic words, as in an host and an house, though they are supposed to go with h-less pronunciations, formerly much more common. Over the centuries h has been an uncertain quantity at the beginnings of words in many European languages. Most words beginning with h lost it as they passed from Latin into French and Italian. The Latin word hora meaning “hour” became French heure (pronounced “err,” with no h sound) and also the Italian ora, without an h even in the spelling. English retains an h in the spelling of hour but not in the pronunciation. The process also shows up in the contrasting pronunciations of heir (an early English loan from French) and hereditary (a Renaissance borrowing direct from Latin), which embody the same Latin stem. Spelling pronunciation has revived the h in some French loanwords like heritage and historian (those well used in English writing); while others such as hour heir hono(u)r are h-less, in keeping with , , French pronunciation. Classical loanwords (apart from honorary, honorarium, honoriﬁc) have settled on pronunciations with the h sounded; and they complement the many basic Anglo-Saxon words such , as here, how, him and hair home, honey in which h is pronounced. (See further under h.) Nowadays the silent h persists in only a handful of French loanwords (heir honest, hono(u)r hour and , , their derivatives), and these need to be preceded by an. The h of other loans like heroic, historical and hypothesis may have been silent or varied in earlier times, leaving uncertainty as to whether an was required or not. But their pronunciation is no longer variable and provides no phonetic justiﬁcation for an. Its use with them is a stylistic nicety, lending historical nuances to discourse in which tradition dies hard. ♦ For the grammar..."

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