Archive-name: alt-usage-english-faq Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 25 May 1994 Sorry, I'm still busy -- this is the same FAQ file that you saw last time. There's a large backlog of suggestions and contributions, which I sincerely appreciate and will process when I have the time. misrael@csi.uottawa.ca Mark Israel THE ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH FAQ FILE ------------------------------ by Mark Israel misrael@csi.uottawa.ca Last updated: 25 May 1994 1. Please send suggestions/flames/praise to me by e-mail rather than post them to the newsgroup. The purpose of an FAQ file is to reduce traffic, not increase it. 2. This is in no sense an "official" FAQ file. Feel free to start your own. I certainly can't stop you. 3. Don't expect me to add a topic unless you're willing to contribute the entry for that topic. Thanks to all who *have* contributed! Table of Contents ----------------- Welcome to alt.usage.english! guidelines for posting other related newsgroups recommended books dictionaries online dictionaries general reference grammars books on linguistics books on usage books that discriminate synonyms style manuals books on mathematical exposition books on phrasal verbs books on phrase origins books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc. books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language books on group names artificial dialects Basic English E-prime pronunciation how to represent pronunciation in ASCII rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r" words pronounced differently according to context words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation usage disputes "acronym" "alright" "between you and I" "could care less" "different to", "different than" double "is" "due to" gender-neutral pronouns "hopefully", "thankfully" "It's me" vs "it is I" "less" vs "fewer" "more/most/very unique" "none is" vs "none are" plurals plurals of Latin and Greek words plurals => English singulars preposition at end repeated words after abbreviations "shall" vs "will", "would" vs "should" "that" vs "which" the the hoi polloi debate "you saying" vs "your saying" punctuation "." after abbreviations ," vs ", "A, B and C" vs "A, B, and C" foreigners' FAQs "a"/"an" before abbreviations "A number of..." when to use "the" subjunctive word origins "bug"="defect" "Caesarean section" "canola" "crap" "fuck" "hooker" "kangaroo" "loo" "O.K." "posh" "quiz" "scot-free" "sirloin"/"baron of beef" "SOS" "spoonerism" "tip" "titsling"/"brassiere" "wog" "ye" = "the" phrase origins "blue moon" "Bob's your uncle" "to call a spade a spade" "The die is cast" "dressed to the nines" "Elementary, my dear Watson!" "The exception proves the rule" "face the music" "Go figure" "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata) "Let them eat cake" "mind your p's and q's" "more honoured in the breach than in the observance" "rule of thumb" "son of a gun" "spitting image"/"spit and image" "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" "the whole nine yards" miscellany deliberate mistakes in dictionaries list of language terms commonest words What words are their own antonym? Biblical sense of "to know" postfix "not" origin of the dollar sign spelling diacritics "-ize" vs "-ise" possessive apostrophes ==================================================================== WELCOME TO ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH! ----------------------------- alt.usage.english is a newsgroup where we discuss the English language (and also occasionally other languages). We discuss how particular words, phrases, and syntactic forms are used; how they originated; and where in the English-speaking world they're prevalent. (All this is called "description".) We also discuss how we think they *should* be used ("prescription"). alt.usage.english is for everyone, *not* only for linguists, native speakers, or descriptivists. Guidelines for posting ---------------------- Things you may want to consider avoiding when posting here: (1) re-opening topics (such as "hopefully") that experience has shown lead to circular debate. (One function of the FAQ file is to point out topics that have already been discussed ad nauseam.) (2) questions that can be answered by simple reference to a dictionary. (3) generalities. If you make a statement like: "Here in the U.S. we NEVER say 'different to'", "Retroflex 'r' is ONLY used in North America", or "'Eh' ALWAYS rhymes with 'pay'", chances are that someone will pounce on you with a counterexample. (4) assertions that one variety of English is "true English". (5) sloppy writing (as distinct from simple slips like typing errors, or errors from someone whose native language is not English). Keep in mind that the regulars on alt.usage.english are probably less willing than the general population to suffer sloppy writers gladly; and that each article is written by one person, but read perhaps by thousands, so the convenience of the readers really ought to have priority over the convenience of the writer. Again, this is *not* to discourage non-native speakers from posting; readers will be able to detect that you're writing in a foreign language, and will make allowances for this. (6) expressions of exasperation. In the course of debate, you may encounter positions based on premises radically different from yours and perhaps surprisingly novel to you. Saying things like "Oh, please", "That's absurd", "Give me a break", or "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, my man" is unlikely to win your opponent over. You really *are* welcome to post here! Don't let the impatient tone of this FAQ frighten you off. Other related newsgroups ------------------------ There are other newsgroups which also discuss the English language. bit.listserv.words-l (which is a redistribution of a BITNET mailing list -- not all machines on Usenet carry these) is also billed to be for "English language discussion", but its participants engage in a lot more socializing and general chitchat than we do. sci.lang is where most of the professional linguists hang out. Discussions tend to be about linguistic methodology (rather than *particular* words and phrases), and prescription is severely frowned upon there. Newbies post many things there that would better be posted here. alt.flame.spelling (which fewer sites carry than carry alt.usage.english) is the place to criticize other people's spelling. We try to avoid doing that here (although some of us do get provoked if you spell language terms wrong. It's "consensus", not "concensus"; "diphthong", not "dipthong"; "grammar", not "grammer"; "guttural", not "gutteral"; and "pronunciation", not "pronounciation"). rec.puzzles is a better place than here to ask questions like "What English words end in '-gry' or '-endous'?", "What words contain 'vv'?", "What words have 'e' pronounced as /I/?", "What Pig Latin words are also words?", or "How do you punctuate 'John where Bill had had had had had had had had had had the approval of the teacher' or 'That that is is that that is not is not that that is not is not that that is is that it it is' to get comprehensible text?" But, before you post such a question there, make sure it's not answered in the rec.puzzles archive, available by anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu; the relevant section is in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers/puzzles/archive/language . Language features peculiar to the U.K. get discussed in soc.culture.british as well as here. Before posting to either newsgroup on this subject, you should check out Jeremy Smith's British-American dictionary, available by anonymous ftp from ftp.csos.orst.edu as pub/networking/bigfun/usuk_dictionary.txt . If you have a (language-related or other) peeve that you want to mention but don't particularly want to justify, you can try alt.peeves. ("What is your pet peeve?" is *not* a frequently asked question in alt.usage.english, although we frequently get unsolicited answers to it. If you're new to this group, chances are excellent that your particular pet peeve is something that has already been discussed to death by the regulars.) If you're interested in the peculiarities of language as used by computer users, get the Jargon File by anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38) under pub/gnu (also available in paperback form as _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, ed. Eric S. Raymond, 2nd edition, MIT Press, 1993, ISBN 0-262-68079-3). This is also the place to find answers to questions like "How do you pronounce '#'?" You can discuss hacker language further in the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers. ==================================================================== RECOMMENDED BOOKS ----------------- Dictionaries ------------ The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd ed. (OED2) (Oxford University Press, 1989, 20 vols.; compact edition, 1991 ISBN 0-19-861258-3; additions series, 2 vols., 1993, ISBN 0-19-861292-3 and 0-19-861299-0), has no rivals as a historical dictionary of the English language. It is too large for the editors to keep all of it up-to-date, and hence should not be relied on for precise definitions of technical terms, or for consistent usage labels. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 1961, ISBN 0-87779-206-1) (W3) is the unabridged dictionary to check for 20th-century U.S. citations of word use, and for precise definitions of technical terms too rare to appear in collegiate dictionaries. People sometimes cite W3 with a later date. These later dates refer to the addenda section at the front, *not* to the body of the dictionary, which is unchanged since 1961. W3 was widely criticized by schoolteachers and others for its lack of usage labels; e.g., it gives "imply" as one of the meanings of "infer" and "flout" as one of the meanings of "flaunt", without indicating that these are disputed usage. Others have defended the lack of usage labels. An anthology devoted to the controversy is _Dictionaries and THAT Dictionary: A Case Book of the Aims of Lexicographers and the Targets of Reviewers_, ed. James Sledd and Wilma R. Ebbitt (Scott Foresman, 1962). Please don't refer to any dictionary simply as "Webster's". _Books in Print_ has 5 columns of book titles beginning with "Webster's"! Among collegiate dictionaries, the ones most frequently mentioned here are Collins English Dictionary (3rd edition, HarperCollins, 1991, ISBN 0-00-433287-3) and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (Merriam-Webster, 1993, ISBN 0-919028-25-X) (MWCD10). Merriam-Webster publishes sub-editions of its collegiate dictionaries, so look at the copyright date to see exactly what you have. Chamber's English Dictionary (1991, ISBN 0-550102507) is the standard dictionary for British crossword compilers and scrabble players. If you're interested in etymology, get The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, ISBN 0-395-44895-6) (AHD3) or Henry Cecil Wyld's _Universal English Dictionary_ (Wordsworth, reprinted from 1932, ISBN 1-85326-940-9). These are two of the few dictionaries that trace words back to their reconstructed Indo-European (Aryan) roots. Although AHD3 looks larger than a collegiate dictionary, its word count puts it in the collegiate range. If you want an up-to-date dictionary that is larger than a collegiate, get the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd edition, Random House, revised 1993, ISBN 0-679-42917-4) (RHUD2). Online dictionaries ------------------- The OED is available on CD ROM for PCs, and server-style for Unix systems. For info on obtaining the Unix version in North America, phone the Open Text Corporation in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: (519) 571-7111. Info from Alex Lange: The online OED is encoded with the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which is ISO 8879:1986 and is discussed in obscure detail on the comp.text.sgml newsgroup. The funny-looking escape codes beginning with "&" are known as "text entity references". The ISO has defined a slew of such for use with SGML: publishing symbols, math and scientific symbols, and so on. A good place to start for information about SGML and its uses is an article "SGML Frees Information", Byte, June 1992. Info from Graham Toal: The Webster Server is best accessed via the "webster" program (use the archie service to find it). An old Webster's dictionary (not the one used by the NeXT or the Webster Server, though it looks as if it might have been that version's grandfather) is available by anonymous ftp from src.doc.ic.ac.uk in the directory media/literary/dictionaries . Roget's Thesaurus (1911 version, out of copyright) is available from mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu as pub/etext/etext91/roget13.txt . black.ox.ac.uk has Collins English Dictionary (1st edition) converted to a Prolog fact base; the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary; and the MRC Psycholinguistic Database (150,837 word forms, expanded from the headwords in the Shorter Oxford, with info about 26 different linguistic properties). Read the conditions of use for the Oxford Text Archive materials before using; most texts are available for scholarly use and research only. General reference ----------------- _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_ (ed. Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-214183-X) is an encyclopedia with a wealth of information on various dialects, on lexicography, and almost everything else except individual words and expressions. _Success With Words_ (Reader's Digest, 1983, ISBN 0-88850-117-X) is especially suitable for beginners. Books on linguistics -------------------- David Crystal _The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_ Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-26438-3 David Crystal _A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics_ Blackwell, 1985, ISBN 0-631-14081-6 William Bright, ed. _International Encyclopedia of Linguistics_ 4 vols., Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-505196-3 R. E. Asher, ed. _The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics_ 10 vols., Pergamon, 1994, ISBN 0-08-035943-4 Grammars -------- Randolph Quirk et al. _A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language_ Longman, 1985, ISBN 0-582-51734-6 Otto Jespersen _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_ 7 volumes, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1909-1949. Books on usage -------------- The best survey of the history of usage disputes and how they correlate with actual usage is Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, Merriam-Webster, 1989, ISBN 0-87779-032-9 (WDEU). Among conservative prescriptivists, the most highly respected usage book is the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler -- 1st edition, 1926 (MEU); 2nd edition, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford University Press, 1965, ISBN 0-19-281389-7 (MEU2). Robert Burchfield (who edited the OED supplement) was supposedly working on a 3rd edition, although nothing seems to have come of this. _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White (Macmillan, 3rd ed. 1979) and Wilson Follett's _Modern American Usage_ (Hill and Wang, 1966) have their partisans here, although they aren't as *widely* respected as Fowler. Liberals most often refer to the Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans (Random House, 1957, ISBN 0-8022-0973-4 -- out of print). Books that discriminate synonyms -------------------------------- _Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms_, Merriam-Webster, 1984, ISBN 0-87779-241-0 Style manuals ------------- _The Chicago Manual of Style_ (University of Chicago Press, 1982, ISBN 0-226-10390-0) covers manuscript preparation; copy- editing; proofs; rights and permissions; typography; and format of tables, captions, bibliographies, and indexes. Book on mathematical exposition ------------------------------- Norman E. Steenrod, Paul R. Halmos, Menahem M. Schiffer, Jean A. Dieudonne _How to Write Mathematics_ American Mathematical Society, 1973, ISBN 0-8218-0055-8. Books on phrasal verbs ---------------------- A. P. Cowie and Ronald Mackin _Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English: Verbs with Prepositions and Particles, Vol. I_ OUP, 1975, ISBN 0-19-431145-7 Rosemary Courtney _Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs_ Longman, 1983, ISBN 0-582-55530-2 F. T. Wood _English Verbal Idioms_ London: Macmillan, 1966, ISBN 0-333-09673-8 F. T. Wood _English Prepositional Idioms_ London: Macmillan, 1969, ISBN 0-333-10391-2 Books on Britishisms, Canadianisms, etc. ---------------------------------------- There are many *hundreds* of differences between British and American English. From time to time, we get threads in which each post mentions *one* of these differences. Because such a thread can go on for ever, it's helpful to delimit the topic more narrowly. The books to get are _The Hutchinson British/American Dictionary_ by Norman Moss (Arrow, 1990, ISBN 0-09-978230-8); _British English, A to Zed_ by Norman W. Schur (Facts on File, 1987, ISBN 0-8160-1635-6); and _Modern American Usage_ by H. W. Horwill (OUP, 2nd ed., 1935). Jeremy Smith (jeremy@csos.orst.edu) has compiled his own British-American dictionary, available by anonymous ftp from ftp.csos.orst.edu as pub/networking/bigfun/usuk_dictionary.txt . He plans to publish it as a paperback. For Australian English, see _The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Colloquial Language_ (Macquarie, 1988, ISBN 0-949757-41-1); _The Macquarie Dictionary_ (Macquarie, 1981, ISBN 0-949757-00-4); _The Australian National Dictionary_ (Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-55736-5); or _The Dinkum Dictionary_ (Viking O'Nell, 1988, ISBN 0-670-90419-8). For New Zealand English, there's the _Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary_, ed. H. W. Orseman (Heinemann, 1979, ISBN 0-86863-373-9); and _A Personal Kiwi-Yankee Slanguage Dictionary_, by Louis S. Leland Jr. (McIndoe, 1987, ISBN 0-86868-001-X). For South African English, see _A Dictionary of South African English_, ed. Jean Branford (OUP, 3rd ed., 1987, ISBN 0-19-570427-4). For Canadian English, see _A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles_ (Gage, 1967, ISBN 0-7715-1976-1); the _Penguin Canadian Dictionary_ (Copp, 1990, ISBN 0-670-81970-0); or the _Gage Canadian Dictionary_ (Gage, 1982, ISBN 0-7715-9660-X). Books on phrase origins ----------------------- Robert Hendrickson _The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins_ Henry Holt, 1987, ISBN 0-8050-1251-6 Nigel Rees _Bloomsbury Dictionary of Phrase and Allusion_ Bloomsbury, 1991, ISBN 0-7475-1217-5 Christine Anmer _Have a Nice Day -- No Problem! : A Dictionary of Cliches_ Plume Penguin, 1992, ISBN 0-452-27004-9 Ivor H. Evans, ed. _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ Harper & Row, 1981, ISBN 0-02-418230-3 Books on "bias-free"/"politically correct" language --------------------------------------------------- Rosalie Maggio _The Bias-Free Word Finder: A Dictionary of Nondiscriminatory Language_ Beacon, 1992, ISBN 0-8070-6003-8 Nigel Rees _The Politically Correct Phrasebook: What They Say You Can and Cannot Say in the 1990s_ Bloomsbury, 1993, ISBN 0-7475-1426-7 Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf _The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook_, Villard, 1993, ISBN 0-679-74944-6 Books on group names -------------------- James Lipton _An Exaltation of Larks_ Viking Penguin, 1991, ISBN 0-670-3044-6 ==================================================================== ARTIFICIAL DIALECTS ------------------- Basic English ------------- Basic English (where "Basic" stands for "British American Scientific International Commercial") is a subset of English with a base vocabulary of 850 words, propounded by C. K. Ogden in 1929. Look under "Ogden" in your library's author index if you're interested. (We're not.) E-prime ------- E-prime is a subset of standard idiomatic English that eschews all forms of the verb "to be" (e.g., you can't say "You are an ass" or "You an ass", but you can say "You act like an ass"). The original reference is D. David Bourland, Jr., "A linguistic note: write in E-prime" _General Semantics Bulletin_, 1965/1966, 32 and 33, 60-61. Albert Ellis wrote a book in E-prime (_Sex and the Liberated Man_). You can also look at the April 1992 issue of the _Atlantic_ if you're interested. (We're not.) The following book contains articles both pro and con on E-Prime: _To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology_, ed. D. David Bourland and Paul D. Johnston, International Society for General Semantics, 1991, ISBN 0-918970-38-5. ==================================================================== PRONUNCIATION ------------- How to represent pronunciation in ASCII --------------------------------------- Beware of using ad hoc methods to indicate pronunciation. The problem with ad hoc methods is that they often wrongly assume your dialect to have certain features in common with the readers' dialect. You may pronounce "bother" to rhyme with "father"; some of the readers here don't. You may pronounce "cot" and "caught" alike; some of the readers here don't. You may pronounce "caught" and "court" alike; some of the readers here don't. The standard way to represent pronunciation (used in the latest British Dictionaries and by linguists worldwide) is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For a complete guide to the IPA, see _Phonetic Symbol Guide_ by Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw (University of Chicago Press, 1986, ISBN 0-226-68532-2). IPA uses many special symbols; on the Net, where we're restricted to ASCII symbols, we must find a way to make do. The following scheme is due to Evan Kirshenbaum. I show here only examples for the sounds most often referred to in this newsgroup. The examples transcribe British Received Pronunciation (RP) except as noted. For Evan's complete scheme, illustrated with examples from U.S. English, see Evan's own regular posts here and to sci.lang, or send e-mail to Evan (kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com). The consonant symbols [b], [d], [f], [h], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p], [r], [s], [t], [v], [w], [z] have their usual English values. [A] = [