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English Usage Guides: History, Advice, Attitudes

English Usage Guides: History, Advice, Attitudes

by Tieken-Boon Van Ostade, Ingrid
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780198808206 Oxford University Press

This volume explores both historical and current issues in English usage guides or style manuals. Guides of this sort have a long history: while Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926) is one of the best known, the first English usage guide was published in the UK in 1770, and the first in the US in 1847. Today, new titles come out nearly every year, while older works are revised and reissued. Remarkably, however, the kind of usage problems that have been addressed over the years are very much the same, and attitudes towards them are slow to change - but they do change. The chapters in this book look at how and why these guides are compiled, and by whom; what sort of advice they contain; how they differ from grammars and dictionaries; how attitudes to usage change; and why institutions such as the BBC need their own style guide. The volume will appeal not only to researchers and students in sociolinguistics, but also to general readers with an interest in questions of usage and prescriptivism, language professionals such as teachers and editors, and language policy makers.

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Product details

BrandOxford University Press
Pub dateJan 16, 2018
ISBN-100198808208
ISBN-139780198808206
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions0.56 × 6.14 × 9.21 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2026-08-30 04:54
$137.46
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