Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. H.W.
The King’s English H.W. Fowler The plan for the second edition of the classic reference work The King’s English was dictated by the following considerations: (1) to pass by all rules, of whatever absolute importance, that are shown by observation to be seldom or never broken; and (2) to illustrate by living examples, with the name of a reputable authority attached to each, all blunders that observation shows to be common.
C ONTENTSBibliographic Record Preface SECOND EDITION
OXFORD: CLARENDON PRESS, 1908
No levell'd malice
Infects one comma in the course I hold.
Timon of Athens, I. i. 48.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 nounDo as substitute verbFresh 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, &cClumsy patching
Omission of the conjunction that
Meaningless while
Commercialisms
Pet Phrases
Also as conjunction; and &c
