Path: alphanet.ch!imp.ch!uni-erlangen.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!newsfeed.internetmci.com!164.67.42.145!nntp.info.ucla.edu!132.239.254.208!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!news.scripps.edu!misrael From: misrael@scripps.edu (Mark Israel) Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: alt.usage.english FAQ Followup-To: poster Date: 30 Sep 1997 00:45:52 GMT Organization: The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA Lines: 7179 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <60pi40$hn8$1@hermes.scripps.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: struct.scripps.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Xref: alphanet.ch alt.usage.english:103970 alt.answers:1566 news.answers:5502 Archive-name: alt-usage-english-faq Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 29 September 1997 THE ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH FAQ FILE ------------------------------ by Mark Israel misrael@scripps.edu Last updated: 29 September 1997 New entries this year: "God rest you merry, gentlemen" "if I was" vs "if I were" "mouses" vs "mice" "try and", "be sure and", "go" + verb spaces between sentences "ebonics" "paparazzo" "suck"="be very unsatisfying" "billions and billions" "break a leg" "cut the mustard" "full monty" "Jingle Bells" "ollie ollie oxen free" words without vowels How reliable are dictionaries? doubling of final consonants before suffixes -1. For those who have asked for a URL for the newsgroup, I'll try: 0. Yes, I know that this file is too big for some newsreaders. If you are cursed with such a newsreader, you can ftp this file from "rtfm.mit.edu", directory "pub/usenet/alt.usage.english", file "alt.usage.english_FAQ". (It's also on the World Wide Web: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/alt-usage-english-faq/faq.html Or you can send me (misrael@scripps.edu) e-mail and I'll send it to you in pieces. Sorry for the inconvenience, but there are more of us who appreciate the convenience of a single file. 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. Please don't expect me to add a topic unless (a) you're willing to contribute the entry for that topic; (b) the topic has come up at least twice in the newsgroup, *or* the entry gives information that cannot readily be found elsewhere; and (c) if the topic has been controversial in the newsgroup, your entry attempts to represent conflicting points of view. Thanks to all who *have* contributed! Table of Contents ----------------- Welcome to alt.usage.english! guidelines for posting related newsgroups recommended books dictionaries online dictionaries general reference grammars books on linguistics books on usage online usage guides online language columns 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 books on rhyming slang artificial dialects Basic English E-prime pronunciation how to represent pronunciation in ASCII rhotic vs non-rhotic, intrusive "r" How do Americans pronounce "dog"? words pronounced differently according to context words whose spelling has influenced their pronunciation usage disputes "acronym" "all ... not" "alot" "alright" "between you and I" "company is" vs "company are" "could care less" "could of" "different to", "different than" "done"="finished" double "is" "due to" "functionality" gender-neutral pronouns "God rest you merry, gentlemen" "hopefully", "thankfully" "if I was" vs "if I were" "impact"="to affect" "It needs cleaned" "It's me" vs "it is I" "less" vs "fewer" "like" vs "as" "like" vs "such as" "more/most/very unique" "mouses" vs "mice" "near miss" "none is" vs "none are" plurals plurals of Latin and Greek words plurals => English singulars preposition at end "quality" repeated words after abbreviations "Scotch" "shall" vs "will", "would" vs "should" split infinitive "that" vs "which" "that kind of a thing" the the hoi polloi debate "true fact" "try and", "be sure and", "go" + verb "whom" "you saying" vs "your saying" punctuation "." after abbreviations spaces between sentences ," 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 "A.D." "alumin(i)um" "bloody" "bug"="defect" "Caesarean section" "canola" "catch-22" "cop" "copacetic" "crap" "ebonics" "eighty-six"="nix" "Eskimo" "flammable" "freeway" "fuck" "golf" "hooker" "ISO" "jerry-built"/"jury-rigged" "kangaroo" "limerence" "loo" "love"="zero" "merkin" "nimrod" "O.K." "outrage" "paparazzo" "pie-shaped" "portmanteau word" "posh" "quiz" "Santa Ana" "scot-free" "sincere" "sirloin"/"baron of beef" "SOS" "spoonerism" "suck"="be very unsatisfying" "till"/"until" "tip" "titsling"/"brassiere" "troll" "typo" "Wicca" "widget" "wog" "wonk" "wop" "ye"="the" phrase origins "the bee's knees" "beg the question" "billions and billions" "blue moon" "Bob's your uncle" "break a leg" "to call a spade a spade" "cut the mustard" "cut to the chase" "The die is cast" "dressed to the nines" "Elementary, my dear Watson!" "Enquiring minds want to know" "The exception proves the rule" "face the music" "fall off a turnip truck" "full monty" "Get the lead out" "Go figure" "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste" (Desiderata) "go to hell in a handbasket" "hell for leather" "hoist with his own petard" "by hook or by crook" "Illegitimis non carborundum" "in like Flynn" "Jingle Bells" "Let them eat cake" "mind your p's and q's" "more honoured in the breach than the observance" "more than you can shake a stick at" "ollie ollie oxen free" "peter out" "politically correct" "push the envelope" "put in one's two cents' worth" "rule of thumb" "shouting fire in a crowded theater" "son of a gun" "spitting image"/"spit and image" "There's a sucker born every minute" "to all intents and purposes" "wait for the other shoe to drop" "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" "whole cloth" "the whole nine yards" "You have another think coming" words frequently sought words ending in "-gry" words without vowels list of language terms "I won't mention..." names of "&", "@", and "#" "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." "Take the prisoner downstairs", said Tom condescendingly. What is the opposite of "to exceed"? What is the opposite of "distaff side"? grass strip between road and sidewalk miscellany What is a suggested format for citing online sources? Does the next millennium begin in 2000 or 2001? What will we call the next decade? Fumblerules ("Don't use no double negatives", etc.) English is Tough Stuff What is the phone number of the Grammar Hotline? deliberate mistakes in dictionaries How reliable are dictionaries? etymologies of personal names How did "Truly" become a personal name? trademarks commonest words Why do we say "30 years old" but "a 30-year-old man"? What words are their own antonym? sentences grammatical in both Old English and Modern English radio alphabets distribution of English-speakers provenance of English vocabulary "billion": a U.K. view Biblical sense of "to know" postfix "not" origin of the dollar sign spelling spelling reform joke about step-by-step spelling reform What is "ghoti"? I before E except after C How do you spell "e-mail"? Why is "I" capitalized? diacritics "-er" vs "-re" "-ize" vs "-ise" doubling of final consonants before suffixes 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 singular "they" and "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. You can find an archive of articles posted in alt.usage.english and other newsgroups at . Type in a search string in the form "alt.usage.english AND keyword". Note that Deja News offers a choice of two databases: Current or Old. "Current" contains the most recent few weeks of articles; "Old" goes back to the start of the archive in March 1995.) (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. Related newsgroups ------------------ There are other newsgroups that 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 as being for "English language discussion", but its participants engage in a lot more socializing and general chitchat than we do. There is a mailing list for copy-editors. To subscribe, send e-mail with the text "SUBSCRIBE COPYEDITING-L Your Name" to listproc@cornell.edu . sci.lang is where most of the professional linguists hang out. Discussions tend to be about linguistic methodology (rather than about *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"). alt.usage.english.neologism is described as being for "meaningless words coined by psychotics". Fewer sites carry it, and it gets little traffic; the people who do post to it are generally not negative about neologisms. 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 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 at The "-gry" answer is now also to be found below in this FAQ. Wordplay for its own sake (anagrams, palindromes, etc.) belongs in alt.anagrams. There are also long lists of such things in the rec.puzzles archive. "The Word Gamer's Paradise" at may also be of interest. misc.education.language.english is a newsgroup devoted to the teaching of English (especially as a second language). comp.edu.languages.natural is devoted to software for assisting language instruction. misc.writing is devoted to writing, and especially to the concerns of people trying to establish themselves as professional writers. alt.quotations is the place to ask about origins of quotations (although there is no firm dividing line between those and phrase origins, which belong here). You can access the 1901 edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations at: 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 look at Jeremy Smith's British-American dictionary, available on the WWW at: 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, or on the WWW: (also available in paperback form as _The New Hacker's Dictionary_, ed. Eric S. Raymond, 3rd edition, MIT Press, 1996, ISBN 0-262-68092-0). Words you encounter on the Net that you can't find in general English dictionaries ("automagic", "bogon", "emoticon", "mudding", the prefix "Ob-" as in "ObAUE", "prepend") you may well find in the Jargon File. You can discuss hacker language further in the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers, or in the moderated newsgroup comp.society.folklore . Two newsgroups that don't deal with the English language but that people often need directing to are: sci.classics (now preferably humanities.classics), for questions about Latin and ancient Greek; and comp.fonts, for questions about typography. ==================================================================== 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 0-87779-201-1) (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 college 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); a more recent book, _The Story of Webster's Third : Philip Gove's Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics_ by Herbert C. Morton (Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-46146-4) is heavily biased in favour of W3. Merriam-Webster is working on a 4th edition, with completion expected around the year 2000. Please don't refer to any dictionary simply as "Webster's". _Books in Print_ has 5 columns of book titles beginning with "Webster's", from many different publishers! One-volume 8"x10" dictionaries are popularly known as "collegiate dictionaries", but they should be called "college dictionaries" or "quarto dictionaries", since "Collegiate" is a trademark of Merriam- Webster. The college dictionary most frequently cited here is Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (Merriam- Webster, 1994, ISBN 0-87779-712-9) (MWCD10). Merriam-Webster publishes sub-editions of its Collegiate dictionaries, so look at the copyright date to see exactly what you have. The most comprehensive British college dictionary is Collins English Dictionary (3rd edition, HarperCollins, updated 1994, ISBN 0-00-470678-1). Our British posters seem to refer more often to The Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th Edition, Oxford University Press, 1995, 0-19-861319-9) (COD9) and The Chambers Dictionary (Chambers, 1994, ISBN 0-550-10256-6). Some of us believe that the editorial standard of the Concise Oxford has declined since H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler brought out the first few editions; some of the partisans of COD9 seem to have bought it COD9 simply because it said "Oxford" on the cover, and not compared it with other dictionaries. 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 Webster's New World College Dictionary (3rd edition, Macmillan, 1996, ISBN 0-02-860333-8). These are two of the few dictionaries that trace words back to their reconstructed Indo-European (Aryan) roots. AHD3 is particularly useful because it lists the etyma all together in an appendix. Because the appendix was pared in the third edition, _The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots_, by Calvert Watkins (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), although out of print, is not obsolete. Although AHD3 looks larger than a college dictionary, its word count puts it in the college range. If you want an up-to-date dictionary that is larger than a college dictionary, get the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd edition, Random House, revised 1993, ISBN 0-679-42917-4) (RHUD2). Online dictionaries ------------------- You *cannot* access the OED online, unless you or your institution has paid to do so. The second edition is copyright, and allowing public access to it would be *illegal*. A public-access version of the first edition is conceivable, but I don't know of one. 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: e-mail "info@opentext.com". Don't ask us where to buy the CD-ROM version: your local bookshop can order it for you. If you want to submit citations for the next edition of the OED, you can contact the OED staff directly at "oed3@oup.co.uk". 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 learning about SGML is "A Gentle Introduction to SGML" at . There's also the book _Industrial-Strength SGML: An Introduction to Enterprise Publishing_ by Truly Donovan (Prentice Hall, 1996, ISBN 0-13-216243-1). Merriam-Webster's MWCD10 is publicly accessible at . Project Gutenberg has put out two versions of an unabridged dictionary published early in this century by the company that is now Merriam-Webster. One version is in HTML format and comes to 45 Mb when unZIPed. The other is plain text and comes in several ZIP files with names such as pgwXX04.ZIP, where the XX are the initial letters of words included. All are available in . They're also on the Web at . Any "Webster" dictionary that you find anywhere else on the Net is probably an out-of-date bootleg. Keep in mind that any dictionary containing such words as "beat.nik" and "tran.sis.tor" is too recent to be in the public domain. The Macquarie dictionary is accessible online at . Roget's Thesaurus (1911 version, out of copyright) is available from: The Oxford Text Archive at: 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. The best "Word of the Day" service is the one run by Merriam-Webster at ; it can also be subscribed to by e-mail. Other Word-of-the-Day services are at (run by Anu Garg, who also offers dictionary, thesaurus, acronym, and anagram services by e-mail), , , and . General reference ----------------- _The Oxford Companion to the English Language_ (ed. Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-214183-X) is an encyclopaedia 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 (WDEU -- recently reprinted as _Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage_, ISBN 0-87779-131-7). Among conservative prescriptivists, the most highly respected usage book is the Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler -- 1st edition, 1926 (MEU); a facsimile of the original edition was published by Wordsworth Reference in 1994 (ISBN 1-85326-318-4). The 2nd edition (MEU2), revised by Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford University Press, 1965, ISBN 0-19-281389-7) is generally respected, although not idolized, by Fowler's devotees. A "third edition", _The New Fowler's Modern English Usage_ (MEU3), by Robert Burchfield (who edited the OED supplement), appeared in 1996 after a long wait (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-869126-2). It retains virtually none of Fowler's original text, is a sharp philosophical departure from Fowler, and has many errors, although it does contain some information not to be found elsewhere. Oxford University Press has announced that it will keep MEU2 in print as a paperback. (What was initially announced as an independent revision of MEU by the late Sir Kingsley Amis has turned out to be "not a revision of Fowler in any way, but rather a from-scratch usage book of the discursive-paragraph sort": _The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage_, HarperCollins, 1997, ISBN 0-00-255681-2). _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk and E. B. White (Macmillan, 3rd ed. 1979, ISBN 0-02-418190-0) and Wilson Follett's _Modern American Usage_ (Hill and Wang, 1966, ISBN 0-8090-0139-X) 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). Online usage guides ------------------- Jack Lynch (jlynch@english.upenn.edu) has a style guide that he originally wrote for business writers and modified for an English Literature course that he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania: Some topics that some people expect to be covered in this FAQ file, such as "affect" vs "effect", "compose" vs "comprise", and "i.e." vs "e.g.", actually belong in a list of things that writers need to be cautioned about; you'll find them in Jack's guide. A more comprehensive, but more simple-minded, guide, by the English Department of the University of Victoria, Canada, is at: Bill Walsh, copy desk chief of the Washington Times, has a "Curmudgeon's Stylebook" at . Project Bartleby at Columbia has an incomplete copy of the 1918 edition of Strunk's book _The Elements of Style_ (before White got to it), with some simple hypertext markup: It also has the second edition of _The King's English_ by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (1907): There is an "anti-grammar" at: Online language columns ----------------------- Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at Random House Dictionary Dept., posts a "Word of the Day" column (articles cover all kinds of English-language topics, not just vocabulary building) at: Evan Morris (words1@interport.net) posts his syndicated newspaper column, "The Word Detective": Richard Lederer posts excerpts from his columns and has many useful links at: Terry O'Connor (toconnor@peg.apc.org) posts "Word for Word", his column in the Queensland newspaper The Courier-Mail: Jed Hartman (logos@kith.org) has a weekly column on words and wordplay, "Words & Stuff", at: Collins Cobuild offers a column called WordWatch: The OED posts its newsletters: The Editorial Eye posts many of its articles: Michael Quinion adds a neologism a week in his World Wide Words: De Proverbio, an electronic journal of international proverb studies, is at: 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, 1993, ISBN 0-226-10389-7) 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 Donald E. Knuth, Tracy Larrabee, & Paul M. Roberts _Mathematical Writing_ Mathematical Association of America, 1989, ISBN 0-88385-063-X 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). You can order British books from Bookpages at , and U.S. books from Amazon Books at . Jeremy Smith (jeremy@peak.org) has compiled his own British-American dictionary, available on the WWW at . He plans to publish it as a paperback. There is another British-American dictionary, maintained by Mark Horn (ttwy08a@prodigy.com), at . For Australian English, see _The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Colloquial Language_ (Macquarie, 1988, ISBN 0-949757-41-1); _The Macquarie Dictionary_ (Macquarie, 1991, ISBN 0-949757-63-2); _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). You can order Australian books from the Australian Online Bookshop at . Robert P. O'Shea (rpo@wjh.harvard.edu) has an online dictionary at . 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, 1997, ISBN 0-7715-7399-5). You can order Canadian books from Canada's Virtual Bookstore at . For Irish English, see Padiac O'Farrell's _How the Irish speak English (Mercier, 1993, ISBN 1-85635-055-X); Patrick W. Joyce's _English as We Speak it in Ireland_ (Wolfhound, 2nd ed., 1987, ISBN 0-86327-122-7); or Niklas Miller's _Irish-English, English-Irish Dictionary_ (Abson, 1982, ISBN 0-902920-11-1); or search for titles containing the word "dictionary" at the Read Ireland Bookstore at . A "Scots Leid Haunbuik an FAQ" is available at . The FAQ for the newsgroup soc.culture.scottish has many useful pointers. For English in India, see Ivor Lewis's _Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs: A Dictionary of the Words of Anglo-Indian_ (OUP, 1991, ISBN 0-19-562582-X). Books on phrase origins ----------------------- Be warned that every book on phrase origins so far published has etymologies that are more speculative and less rigorous than those in general dictionaries. Christine Ammer _Have a Nice Day -- No Problem! : A Dictionary of Cliches_ Plume Penguin, 1992, ISBN 0-452-27004-9 Robert Hendrickson _The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins_ Facts on File, 1987, ISBN 0-86237-122-7 (The paperback reprint, _The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins_, is no longer available.) Nigel Rees _Bloomsbury Dictionary of Phrase and Allusion_ Bloomsbury, 1991, ISBN 0-7475-1217-5 Ivor H. Evans, ed. _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ 14th ed., Harper & Row, 1989, ISBN 0-304-31835-3 Charles Earle Funk _2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings, and Expressions from White Elephants to Song & Dance_ (an omnibus of four earlier books, 1948-58) Galahad, 1993, ISBN 0-88365-845-3 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 (This book should be consulted with care. Anything attributed to "The American Hyphen Society" is in fact satire made up by friends of the authors.) Books on group names -------------------- James Lipton _An Exaltation of Larks_ Viking Penguin, 1991, ISBN 0-670-3044-6 Ivan G. Sparkes _Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms_ Gale, 2nd ed, 1985, ISBN 0-8103-2188-2 Rex Collins _A Crash of Rhinoceroses: A Dictionary of Collective Nouns_ Moger Bell, 1993, ISBN 1-55921-096-6 There's an online collection at . Books on rhyming slang ---------------------- Julian Franklyn _A Dictionary of Rhyming Slang_ 3rd ed., Routledge, 1990, ISBN 0-415-04602-5 Paul Wheeler _Upper Class Rhyming Slang_ Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985, ISBN 0-283-99295-6 John Meredith _Dinkum Aussie Rhyming Slang_ Kangaroo, 1991, ISBN 0-86417-333-4 The largest collection on the Web seems to be: ==================================================================== 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 at 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. The most pertinent Web page seems to be . ==================================================================== 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 (kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com). The complete scheme can be accessed on the WWW at: I show here only examples for the sounds most often referred to in this newsgroup. Where there are two columns, the left column shows British Received Pronunciation (RP), and the right column shows a rhotic pronunciation used by at least some U.S. speakers. (There's a WWW page that shows what the IPA symbols look like: .) The IPA itself has a home page: . The consonant symbols [b], [d], [f], [h], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p], [r], [s], [t], [v], [w], and [z] have their usual English values. [A] = [