Who's to say what's proper?(new Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage)(Brief Article)

From: U.S. News & World Report | Date: November 22, 1999| Author: Grose, Thomas K. | Copyright information

LONDON--"The American has no language," wrote British author Rudyard Kipling. "He is dialect, slang, provincialism, accent, and so forth." And for years, that la-di-da view was enshrined in Modern English Usage, the hoity-toity bible on the queen's lingo written 73 years ago by H. W. Fowler. But a new, fourth update, Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, has a decidedly more upbeat appraisal of the American idiom. Indeed, English, American style, is the lingua franca for most of th...

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