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Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms

August 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

lists of words, their alternatives, and their opposites

This Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms should appeal to a number of different users — editors, poets, crossword fans, and word puzzle solvers in general. It’s an easy-to-use source of over 150,000 alternative and opposite words to improve your wordpower and communication skills, and make your English more interesting and original. In fact it’s two books in one, because the dictionary is followed by a huge lexicon of what are termed ‘hard words’.

These are unusual and obscure words you might wish to use in unusual circumstances, running from abattis (a defence made of felled trees with the boughs pointing outwards) to zymurgy (the branch of applied chemistry dealing with the use of fermentation in brewing). The main part of the book offers each headword entry followed by synonyms which are listed alphabetically, and antonyms are placed at the end of entries where appropriate. There are examples to show how words of less obvious senses are used, and markers such as ‘informal’, ‘derogatory’, and ‘obsolete’ highlight the usage style.

For instance, let’s say you wanted to avoid repeating the word hard in a piece of writing. You look up the word and choose from a list of alternatives – and they are arranged in groups according to the sense in which the word is being used:

hard adj 1 adamantine, compact, compressed, dense, firm, flinty, frozen, hardened, impenetrable, impervious, inflexible, rigid, rocky, solid, solidified, steely, stiff, stony, unbreakable, unyielding. 2 hard labour. arduous, back-breaking, exhausting, fatiguing, formidable, gruelling, harsh, heavy, laborious, onerous, rigorous, severe, stiff, strenuous, taxing, tiring, tough, uphill, wearying. 3 a hard problem. baffling, complex, complicated, confusing, difficult, enigmatic, insoluble, intricate, involved, knotty, perplexing, puzzling, tangled, inf thorny. 4 a hard heart. callous, cold, cruel inf hard-boiled, hard-hearted, harsh, heartless, hostile, inflexible, intolerant, merciless, obdurate, pitiless, ruthless, severe, stern, strict, unbending, unfeeling, unfriendly, unkind. 5 a hard blow. forceful, heavy, powerful, strong, violent. 6 hard times. austere, bad, calamitous, disagreeable, distressing, grim, intolerable, painful, unhappy, unpleasant. 7 a hard worker. assiduous, conscientious, devoted, indefatigable, industrious, keen, persistent, unflagging, untiring, zealous. Opp EASY, SOFT. hard-headed > BUSINESSLIKE. hard-hearted > CRUEL. hard up > POOR. hard-wearing > DURABLE.

It has to be said that the synonyms fare better than the antonyms, and of course there are plenty of terms for which there are no antonyms – bicycle for instance. Plenty of synonyms – bike, cycle, two-wheeler – and so on, but no anti-bicycle.

This could also be very useful for crossword addicts in solving those clues which are posed in finding one word which means the same as another – as in ‘adamantine (4)’ = hard.

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Alan Spooner (ed), Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2007, pp.528, ISBN: 0199210659

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English language terms – a glossary

September 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

terms used in the study of English language

This glossary of English Language terms contains the vocabulary and the jargon you will need in any analysis of language and its use. These terms are needed in a number of different subjects: language and linguistics, communication skills, the analysis of prose and poetry, and even certain aspects of philosophy. Click on the links for further explanations and examples.

Abbreviations
letter(s) or shortened word used instead of a full word or phrase

Accent
the features of pronunciation which indicate the regional or the social identity of a speaker

Acquisition
the process by which language skills are developed – particularly in infancy

Adjectives
a word which modifies a noun or a pronoun

Adverbs
a word which modifies a verb, an adverb, or an adjective

Agreement
the grammatical logic and coherence between parts of a sentence

Alliteration
the repetition of consonant sounds – usually at the beginning of words

Apostrophes
a raised comma used to denote either possession or contraction

Articles
a word that specifies whether a noun is definite or indefinite

Assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds

Audience
the person or persons receiving a speech or piece of writing

Brackets
Curved or square punctuation marks enclosing words inserted into a text

Capitals
Upper-case letters used to indicate names, titles, and important words

Clauses
a structural unit of language which is smaller than the sentence but larger than phrases or words, and which contains a finite verb

Cliché
an over-used phrase or expression

Colons
a punctuation mark indicating a pause ranking between a semicolon and a full stop

Commas
a punctuation mark indicating a short pause in a sentence

Conjunction
a word which connects words or other constructions

Consonant
an alphabetic element other than a vowel

Dialect
a form of speech peculiar to a district, class, or person

Figure of speech
expressive use language in non-literal form to produce striking effect

Form
the outward appearance or structure of language, as opposed to its function, meaning, or social use

Full stop
a punctuation mark indicating the end of a sentence

Function
the role language plays to express ideas or attitudes

Grammar
the study of sentence structure, especially with reference to syntax and semantics

Graphology
the study of writing systems

Homonyms
words with the same spelling but with different meanings

Hyphen
a short horizontal mark used to connect words or syllables, or to divide words into parts

Idiom
a sequence of words which forms a whole unit of meaning

Irony
saying [or writing] one thing, whilst meaning the opposite

Jargon
the technical language of an occupation or group

Language change
the development and changes in a language

Lexis
the vocabulary of a language, especially in dictionary form

Metaphor
a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another

Metonymy
a figure of speech in which an attribute is substituted for the whole

Morphology
a branch of grammar which studies the structure of words

Noun
a word which names an object

Onomatopoeia
a word that sounds like the thing it describes

Oxymoron
a figure of speech which yokes two contradictory terms

Paradox
a figure of speech in which an apparent contradiction contains a truth

Paragraph
a distinct passage of writing which is unified by an idea or a topic

Participle
a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective or a noun

Phonetics
the study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds

Phrase
a group of words, smaller than a clause, which forms a grammatical unit

Point of view
a term from literary studies which describes the perspective or source of a piece of writing

Preposition
a word which governs and typically precedes a noun or a pronoun

Pronoun
a word that can substitute for a noun or a noun phrase

Punctuation
a system of marks used to introduce pauses and interruption into writing

Received pronunciation
the regionally neutral, prestige accent of British English

Semantics
the study of linguistic meaning

Semicolon
a punctuation mark which indicates a pause longer than a comma, but shorter than a colon

Sentence
a set of words which form a grammatically complete statement, usually containing a subject, verb, and object

Simile
a figure of speech in which one thing is directly likened to another

Slang
informal, non-standard vocabulary

Speech
the oral medium of transmission for language

Spelling
the convention governing the representation of words by letters in writing systems

Standard English
a dialect representing English speech and writing comprehensible to most users

Structure
the arrangement of parts or ideas in a piece of writing

Style
aspects of writing (or speech) which have an identifiable character generally used in a positive sense to indicate ‘pleasing effects’

Stylistic analysis
the study of stylistic effects in writing

Symbol
an object which represents something other than its self

Synonym
a word which means (almost) the same as another

Syntax
the arrangement of words to show relationships of meaning within a sentence

Tense
the form taken by a verb to indicate time (as in past-present-future)

Text
any piece of writing or object being studied

Tone
an author’s or speaker’s attitude, as revealed in ‘quality of voice’ or ‘selection of language’

Verb
a term expressing an action or a state of being

Vocabulary
the particular selection or types of words chosen in speech or writing

Writing
the use of visual symbols to represent words which act as a code for communication

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English Slang

November 21, 2012 by Roy Johnson

the inventiveness of everyday language

In this fairly hefty study of English slang (‘the people’s poetry’ as he calls it) Michael Adams is trying to bridge the gap between an academic study of linguistics and a populist approach to slang that merely lists recent coinages and their explanations or folk etymologies. He’s trying to make clear distinctions between slang, jargon, colloquial, cant, argot, and merely informal expressions – all of which tend to overlap and bleed into each other.

It’s not easy, because a word can belong to more than one category, depending on who is using it and the context in which it is being used. People often use both slang and jargon at the same time – and make little distinction between the two linguistic categories. Moreover the meaning of a slang expression may change over time (like any other item of language) and whilst a great deal of slang has a short lifespan, it does not necessarily disappear entirely.

His most serious argument is that slang is not a ‘low vulgar, unmeaning language’ – as it is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Adams claims it is a form of poetry that adds vivacity and pungency to our communication – hence his observation that it is ‘the poetry of everyday life’.

After questions of definition he moves on to consider how it is actually used – in other words, a socio-linguistic approach to the subject. He puts an enormous amount of emphasis on African American slang, almost giving the impression that other groups do not generate slang of their own.

I was interested to note that he skirts round the contentious issue of ‘Ebonics’, but he looks in some detail at the issue of slang and gender. Yes, women do use slang as much as men – particularly if you take into account the use of conversational tags such as innit and thingy.

I’m afraid that this also leads into an extended consideration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television shows, where he talks about Buffy and Homer Simpson as if they were real living Americans. He doesn’t seem to take into account that much of the linguistic inventiveness of these characters is the product of largely white middle-class script writers – though it has to be said for their inventiveness that some of the terms they create do pass into everyday use by ordinary human beings.

There’s a whole chapter devoted to the aesthetics of slang, including a scholarly analysis of rhetorical devices such as tmesis (infixing, as in absofuckinglutely) and diacope (as in shut the fuck up) But the problem is that he unpicks his illustrative examples in exhausting detail and then repeats his explanations and bon mots until they are drained of value.

Michael Adams is obviously very knowledgeable on the subject, but I suspect that his approach might be too scholarly for the average reader and not scholarly enough for specialists. But the book got rave reviews when it first appeared in America, so so there’s no reason it won’t do well in the UK.

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Michael Adams, Slang: The People’s Poetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.238, ISBN: 0199913773

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Essential English for Journalists

June 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guidance on good writing and editing techniques

Harold Evans was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981 and then of The Times for a year. [He’s now a New York celebrity with a famous wife]. His earlier publication Newsman’s English was written in the 1970s and has now been revised and updated. Essential English for Journalists is a guide to improving the efficiency of your writing by a method which he announces at the outset as ‘a process of editorial selection, text editing, and presentation’.

In fact he gets off to a slightly shambolic start by describing the various responsibilities for writing in the newsroom, but then settles down to his main subject – the crafting of good prose – where he is quite clearly at home. There’s plenty of good advice on sentence construction, editing for clarity, choice of vocabulary, avoiding obscurity and abstraction, plus eliminating vagueness and cliche. He also includes explanations of words commonly misunderstood – such as chronic, disinterested, and viable (to which he might have added aggravate, which is mistakenly used in the text as a synonym for annoy) – plus some interesting comments on how speeches can be economically digested and reported.

The general tendency of his advice is to prefer the shorter, concrete, and Anglo-Saxon term to the longer, abstract, and Latinate expression which is all-too-prevalent: fire not conflagration, try not endeavour, end not terminate.

He also offers a long and entertaining list of common expressions which roll out of literary-cum-oral usage whose redundancies can be edited to produce a tighter result – ‘blue coloured car’, ‘crisis situation‘, and ‘in the city of Manchester’

Evans gives detailed advice on the structure of good writing. His pages on how to write an introduction will be useful to anybody who wants to make their writing more effective. [In fact I would urge the strategy on those who would like to make the arguments of academic writing stand more clear.] The basic rule is to strike out anything which is not absolutely necessary.

In the centre of the book there is a detailed exposition of how newspaper reports should be written – with critical comments on their structure and narrative strategy. Evans shows how the same basic facts can be arranged to create different emphases. This is an exemplary tutorial for anyone who wishes to acquire the skills of reporting and successful composition.

For all its subject, it’s written in a slightly inflated style which combines the short journalist’s sentence with the vocabulary of an Edwardian litterateur – very self-conscious and aware of its own rhetorical devices.

Readers have not the time and newspapers have not the space for elaborate reiteration. This imposes decisive requirements.

But the advice is sound, and it’s likely to make you look more closely at your own prose. In fact the book has at least three possible readers. It would be an excellent textbook for trainee journalists, especially given the number of clumsy examples Evans quotes and then rewrites as demonstration pieces. Second, it has plenty of tips for experienced journalists and editors trying to write more efficiently. Third, it is full of useful guidance for anyone – beyond the media – who wants to write more coherently.

Evans’ fellow journalist Keith Waterhouse wrote a similar and very amusing guide called Waterhouse on Newspaper Style which unfortunately often seems to be out of print. The two books would make an excellent pairing on any writer’s desk. It would be wise to grab Evans whilst he’s back in re-issue.

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Harold Evans, Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers, London: Random House, 2nd revised edn 2000, pp.256, ISBN: 0712664475

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Figures of speech – understanding them

August 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Figures of speech – definition

‘Figures of speech’ is a term used to describe the devices employed to add colour, decoration, and imaginative expression to linguistic use.

They distinguish figurative or imaginative language from its use in a literal manner.

Common figures of speech include the following:

alliteration, assonance, cliché, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, simile, synecdoche

These are also known as ‘rhetorical devices’.

Examples

Literal – He ran quickly down the street.

Simile – He ran like a hare down the street.

Metaphor – He hared down the street.

Use

Many people use these devices quite unconsciously as part of everyday communication.

For instance, a statement such as ‘His plan was given the thumbs down’ uses a figurative term, not a description of people waggling their thumbs. [It dates back to a Roman emperor’s decision on a gladiator’s fate.]

If we say ‘I’ve told him a thousand times!’ this is not literally true. We are using a figure of speech [hyperbole, or exaggeration] to make a point.

NB! Don’t try too hard to use figures of speech. They’ll come naturally.

Figures of speech or rhetorical devices are present in all cultures. It seems that it is in the very nature of linguistic discourse for speakers to act creatively. Indeed, it is that creativity in language use which ultimately divides language use in humans and animals.

A child begins to be creative by using various figures of speech at the very beginning of the acquisition process. Words such as ‘bang’, ‘smack’, ‘moo’, and ‘baa’ are all onomatopoeic figures of speech common to a child’s early vocabulary.

It is useful to contemplate a continuum of which the two opposites are literal and non-literal in terms of linguistic expression. We could envisage a statement of fact towards one extreme and a metaphor towards the other.

The statement of fact might be This is a wooden door.

An example of a metaphor might be The sunshine of your smile.

These two utterances comprise five words each, yet the metaphor says much more than the factual statement. Not only does it say more but it speaks of vast and abstract elements such as love, the sun, gesture, happiness, human warmth, pleasure and possibly more.

Figures of speech are often used to express abstract emotional or philosophical concepts. The figure of speech attaches the abstract concept to a material object and thus is instrumental in creating powerful and dynamic communication.

Original figures of speech are valued in both speech and in writing. We respect the ability to generate these. Politicians for instance often use figures of speech, and are variously successful with this practice.

Churchill’s image of ‘the iron curtain’ has stayed with us for over fifty years, although the phenomenon it described no longer exists. ‘The cold war’ superseded it, during which it was the threat of someone ‘pressing the button’ which was on everyone’s mind.

The ‘rhetorical question’ is a figure of speech favoured by politician and lay person alike. It is a powerful device because, although it has the appearance of being a question, it often acts as a form of persuasion or criticism.

‘Is our country in danger of becoming a hot-bed of sleaze?’ we might hear a politician ask. ‘Are we going to stand by and let these atrocities continue?’ Listening to our car radio we might mentally frame an answer to this kind of question – or at least we might be drawn into contemplating the issue.

At a more domestic level we might be asked ‘What time do you call this?’ or ‘How many times have I told you …?’ These are questions which actively discourage any answer. They are a form of rebuke which is an established ritual. As competent language users, we know them and participate in the ritual – by not answering, or responding to the ‘real’ (unstated) criticism.

Another figure of speech which spans the social spectrum is the cliché. These are often derided, and the word itself has become a pejorative term. However, the cliché is very much ‘alive and kicking’, especially in the context of football. ‘Over the moon’ about a result and ‘gutted’ to hear the news, are just two such figures of speech heard almost daily over the popular media.

The cliché proves its function by its prolific use. Perhaps it is its over-use, or its application in inappropriate contexts which may cause distaste.

Figures of speech are also known as images. This indicates their function well. The outcome of using them is that the listener or the reader receives a multi-dimensional communication. Lewis Carroll coined the term ‘portmanteau’ for words which are packed with layers of meaning. Although Carroll’s usage is slightly different from that of figures of speech, it does illustrate that we have a strong drive as language users to convey meaning colourfully and economically.

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Filthy English

June 23, 2011 by Roy Johnson

The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing

Dictionaries of slang and obscenity are often disappointing, because they define terms but shy away from discussing exactly how they are used in everyday life. Filthy English does the opposite. Peter Silverton not only tells you what swear words mean, but he illustrates and analyses their use in the very places for which they are designed – the street, the pub, the argument, the curse, and the insult. His analysis of swearing is delivered via an account of his own relation to language in 1950s UK and beyond.

The story goes down endless numbers of digressions – but fortunately he has an amusing and lively style, full of witty asides and one-liners. (“People from Maidenhead never laugh when telling you where they live”) This personal history spreads out into a very well-informed history of the words he is considering. But the humour is underpinned by a very scholarly sense of etymology.

He follows the well-worn tradition of presenting his observations in cod-serious, satirically po-faced categories: Chapter One – ‘Sexual intercourse and Masturbation’; Chapter Two – ‘Anuses, Faeces, Urine, and Other Excreta’. This makes what he has to say all the funnier.

He has a finely attuned ear for the subtleties of language, and spends a number of pages discussing the fine distinctions between calling someone a wanker or a tosser – despite the fact that the words appear to mean the same thing. He brings a sociological as well as an etymological knowledge to his analysis

What also makes this approach so attractive is that he is steeped in the popular culture of the last forty or fifty years in Britain. He recaptures some of its pivotal linguistic moments in vividly entertaining anecdotes from the world of television, sport, pop music, and political life.

He also considers very carefully the shock value or taboo-quotient on well known swear words (or swears as he calls them) as well as pointing to absurdities such as the fact that many people would find “Bugger that!” (anal intercourse) far less offensive than “Fuck that!” (normal sexual intercourse). This is matched by his intelligent sense of the history of language change and development:

Once we were a religious society and ‘damn’ was the word that could tear into our social and emotional fabric. As the Enlightenment edged religion aside, so sexuality became the locus of swear-power – fuck starting its rise in the nineteenth century, followed by cunt in the second half of the twentieth. Now it’s the nouns and epithets of group identity that are taking over – race words mostly, but also ones about religion and class.

It’s quite surprising how rapidly the meaning of a word can change. Spunk was originally the name for touch-wood, the stuff people carried round for starting fires. Then from the eighteenth century onwards it meant courage or bravery:

It was only in the late nineteenth century that the possession of those qualities came to be transferred to the quintessentially liquid expression of masculinity. It’s an intriguing psychological correlation: heroism and the vector of male DNA transmission. Jamaicans call it man juice.

He’s amazingly well informed on swearing in a number of languages from all over the world – which serves well to demonstrate the universality of the phenomenon. And he includes ‘hidden’ languages such as ‘mother-in-law languages’ (a form of avoidance speech) and the Russian unofficial language Mat (older than Russian language itself) which is based upon only four or five words and their infinite variations.

I was also glad to see that he’s smack up to date. In his discussion of the term ‘gay’ he notes that it’s rapidly becoming a general term of gentle teasing, in addition to its conventional use as a synonym for homosexual. One man invites his male friend out for a drink, only to be told he’s tired and wants to stay in. “Don’t be so gay” might be the response.

He finishes with a bravura excursion into psycho-analysis, where with an examination of what Freud and Ferenczi had to say about forbidden language adds up to the fact that these swear words are deeply attached to the most important parts of our bodies. People with Tourette’s Syndrome don’t shout out “Ankles! Shoulders! Opposite sex!”. They shout “Cock! Cunt! Fuck!”

For anyone interested in demotic language, this is a must. Silverton is entertaining from first page to last – and his apercus are backed up with erudition, scholarship, but more importantly with a healthy engagement with the language of everyday life on the streets of the UK and the rest of the world today.

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Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When, and What of Everyday Swearing, London: Portobello Books, 2010, pp.314, ISBN: 184627169X

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Form – how to understand it

August 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Form – definition

Form is a term which refers to the recognisable shape of a text or a speech act.

This shape may be either physical or abstract.

Examples

Spoken		Written
Conversation		Menu
Sermon		Letter
Announcement		Novel
Anecdote		Article
Joke		Poster

Use

The term ‘form’ is used in linguistics and in literary criticism as a technical term.

It is used when considering the shape, the construction, or the type of speech or writing.

An awareness of form can help to produce more efficient communication.

Keeping the ‘shape’ of writing in mind helps to clarify the type of end product required.

NB! An appreciation of form is developed via practice and experience.

Form is an important part of stylistic analysis – together with audience and function.

When studying a text we first try to identify its form. What type of writing is it? (Is it a letter, an advertisement, a timetable, or a novel?)

Then we might ask ‘To whom is it addressed?’ [audience] and ‘What is it doing?’ [function].

When thinking of linguistic or literary form, it’s sometimes useful to think in terms of material shape. For instance, a table is usually a rectangular horizontal surface supported by legs at each corner. That is the form of a table.

Similarly, a piece of writing which begins with a postal address and the words ‘Dear Sir’, then ends with ‘Yours sincerely’ – is likely to be a letter. This is the form taken by most letters.

It is possible for one form to contain another or several other forms. For example, a novel may contain a letter or a poem. A sermon may contain an anecdote.

Most poems have a form, but this varies a great deal. The sonnet is in part defined by its form which is the number of lines and the rhyme scheme.

Form in speech may be signaled by recognizable phrases, tone of voice, or choice of vocabulary.

For instance, ‘The train now standing in platform ten…’ would be recognised by most people as the start of a railway announcement.

Similarly, ‘O Lord, we beseech thee to …’ would easily be identified as the start of a prayer.

If someone says ‘My grandfather always told me that …’ we know that they are probably going to offer moral advice – a piece of homespun wisdom.

Beware! The term ‘formal’ has widened in its application to mean ‘serious’ — just as ‘informal’ has also extended its meaning to encompass notions of friendliness.

For instance, the greeting ‘Hi there!’ might be described by most people as informal. However, because it is part of a recognised verbal ritual, in linguistic terms [strictly speaking] it is ‘formal’ because it has a fixed shape.

The two terms, ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ therefore need to be used accurately when applied to linguistic or literary analysis.

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Fowler’s Modern English Usage

October 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

reprint of the classic first edition

Fowler’s Modern English Usage was first published in 1926. It was an immediate commercial success, selling 60,000 copies in its first year, and it went on to become the most influential set of guidelines on grammar and the use of the English language of the twentieth century. There were later versions revised by Sir Ernest Gowers in 1965 and Robert Burchfield in 1996, but this is a facsimile of Henry Fowler’s original first edition, with an introduction by the linguist David Crystal that sets it in context.

It’s reproduced photographically from the original – so the entries are arranged in two columns on the page, which was the style for books of this kind at the time. This presentation strikes me as doubly appropriate, because it captures the old-fashioned nature of the original, and it accurately reflects the slightly pedantic tone of the contents. Fowler is not unlike his great lexicological predecessor Samuel Johnson in issuing his judgements wrapped around with ironic asides, which makes for interesting reading.

David Crystal’s introductory essay explains how the book came to be published, and how Fowler was an important transition figure between the old, traditional proscriptive grammarians and the new more tolerant descriptive schools which were to follow.

Strangely enough, Fowler, whose name has become a metonym for his Dictionary, is often used by prescriptivists as an authority to support their arguments – when the fact is that his work as a whole reflects a flexible, subtle, and relativist attitude to language and the way it is used.

Fowler deals with all the classic problems in English language, such as the which/that dilemma, the split infinitive, and ending sentences with a preposition. He covers issues that are difficult even for native speakers of English (such as the who/whom issue).

The central problem is the question of usage. If enough people say different from does that make it right? Fowler was working in the days before any giant collections of real data were being used as a source of evidence to support linguistic claims. And he was using printed sources, not spoken, which today are regarded as primary.

However, it’s difficult to predict if he is going to be prescriptive or relativist on any single topic. Crystal points out that there are plenty of inconsistencies within the Dictionary. On some issues Fowler accepts widespread common usage; at others he asserts that something is right or wrong based on nothing more than his own opinion.

It should be said that the Dictionary is not merely a listing of words and their definitions, as in the normal sense of the term. It’s a compendium of how terms are used grammatically, the problems they pose, and the cultural baggage that surrounds them. A typical entry which captures both his stern sense of what is right and his ironic attitude in trying to correct it is as follows:

aggravate, aggravation. 1. The use of these in the sense of annoy, vex, annoyance, vexation, should be left to the uneducated. It is for the most part a feminine or childish colloquialism, but obtrudes occasionally into the newspapers. To aggravate has properly only one meaning—to make (an evil) worse or more serious. The right & the wrong use are shown in: (right) A premature initiative would be calculated rather to a. than to simplify the situation; (wrong) The reopening of the contest by fresh measures that would a. their opponents is the last thing that is desired in Ministerial circles. It is in the participle (and a very stupid, tiresome, aggravating man he is) that the vulgarism is commonest.

You can probably find copies of the first edition Fowler in the few remaining second hand bookshops – but it’s nice to have this reprint to put it back into general circulation again.

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David Crystal (ed) Fowler’s Modern English Usage: The Classic First Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.784, ISBN: 0199535345

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Full stops – how to use them

September 6, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Full stops – definition

Full stops are punctuation marks indicating a strong pause.

Full stops are used most commonly at the end of complete sentences – like this one.

Examples

This is a short sentence. This is another.
It happened suddenly in 1996.
There are two reasons for this (in my opinion).

Use

The full stop is the strongest mark of punctuation. It is sometimes called the ‘period’.

The stop is also used following many abbreviations.

NB! A full stop is not necessary if the sentence ends with a question or an exclamation mark. Got that?

Full stops are commonly placed after abbreviations:

ibid. – No. 1 – ff. – e.g. – etc.

The stop is normally placed inside quotation marks but outside brackets:

“What joy we had that particular day.”

Profits declined (despite increased sales).

However, if the quotation is part of another statement, the full stop goes outside the quote marks:

Mrs Higginbottam whispered “They’re coming”.

If the parenthesis is a complete sentence, the full stop stays inside the brackets:

There was an earthquake in Osaka. (Another had occurred in Tokyo the year previously.)

No full stop is required if a sentence ends with a question mark or an exclamation, or a title or abbreviation which contains its own punctuation:

Is this question really necessary?
What a mess!
He is the editor of Which?
She gave her address as ‘The Manor, Wilts.’

Full stops are not required after titles, headings, or sub-headings:

The Turn of the Screw
Industrial Policy Report
Introduction

The stop is not necessary following common titles which are shortened forms of a word (technically, ‘contractions’):

Dr – [Doctor]
Mr – [Mister]
St – [Street]
Mme – [Madame]

Full stops are not necessary after the capital letters used as abbreviations for titles of organisations and countries:

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation
UNO – United Nations Organisation
USA – United States of America

They are not used where the initials of a standard work of reference are used as an abbreviated title:

OED – Oxford English Dictionary
DNB – Dictionary of National Biography
PMLA – Papers of the Modern Languages Association

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Function – how to understand it

September 6, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Function – definition

Function is the term used to express the purpose of a text or of a speech act.

This function can be determined by the writer or by the reader.

Examples

Texts or spoken pieces might fall into one of the following broad categories:

WRITING

persuasion an advertisement

information a train timetable

entertainment a short story

instruction how to build a wardrobe

SPEECH

persuasion a sermon

information a radio weather forcast

entertainment a joke

instruction how to get from A to B

Use

The term ‘function’ is used as a technical term in linguistics and in literary criticism.

An awareness of function helps to produce efficient writing and speaking.

An awareness of function also results in efficient reading and listening.

NB! Function is one of the three important features of communication. The other two are audience and form.

The four general functions possess certain stylistic features or attributes:

Instruction the imperative mode and direct address
[Stir the mixture]

Persuasion emotive vocabulary
[beautiful, duty, militant, heart]

Information factual data
[time, locations, measurements]

Entertainment often breaks rules of grammar, spelling, pronunciation

Awareness of these in the production of speech or writing leads to effective communication and an appropriate style.

For instance, if we buy a product such as a chicken casserole from a supermarket we may be more interested in what’s in it than how to cook it. We may be interested in both these elements, but we certainly wouldn’t want them mixed together.

Food manufacturers for this reason present the list of ingredients [information] separately from how to prepare the dish [instructions]. This simple example shows the concept of function working efficiently.

If we receive a phone call from a close relative who comes to visit more often than we would like, we immediately try to ascertain the purpose [function] of the call. Is it –

an attempt to fix up the next visit? [persuade]
to tell us the possible dates? [inform]
to explain how their vegetables should be cooked? [instruct]
to tell us that the cat has learned to swim? [entertain]

In this example, the person who phones to arrange the visit may have every interest in obscuring the function of the call. As a recipient however, we are very interested in finding out what it is. Such is the crucial nature of function.

The National Curriculum for the teaching of English in Schools now states the importance of making children aware of the function of all the varied pieces they read and write.

Examining boards for A level English will only accept written work which has an authentic function. That is, it should be as close as possible to an example which could be used in real life.

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