An edition of The King's English
(1906)
The King's English
SECOND EDITION
by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler
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Book Details
First Sentence
"Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."
Table of Contents
PART I
CHAPTER I. VOCABULARY, pp.1-59
General Principles 1-8
Familiar and far-fetched words 4
Concrete and abstract expression 5
Circumlocution 6
Short and long words 6
Saxon and Romance words 7
Requirements of different styles 7
Malaprops 8
Neologisms 18
Americanisms 23
Foreign words 26
Formation 37
Slang 47
Individual 53
Mutual 56
Unique 58
Aggravate 59
CHAPTER II. SYNTAX, pp. 60-170
Case 60
Number 65
Comparatives and superlatives 70
Relatives 75-107
Defining and non-defining relative clauses 75
That and who or which 80
And who, and which 85
Case of the relative 93
Miscellaneous uses of the relative 96
It ... that 104
Participle and gerund 107
Participles 110
The gerund 116-133
Distinguishing the gerund 116
Omission of the gerund subject 125
Choice between gerund and infinitive 129
Shall and will 133-154
The pure system 134
The coloured-future system 136
The plain-future system 138
Second-person questions 139
Examples of principal sentences 141
Substantival clauses 143
Conditional clauses 149
Indefinite clauses 151
Examples of subordinate clauses 152
Perfect infinitive 154
Conditionals 156
Doubt that 158
Prepositions 161
CHAPTER III. AIRS AND GRACES, pp. 171-218
Certain types of humor 171
Elegant variation 175
Inversion 180-193
Exclamatory 181
Balance 182
In syntactic clauses 187
Negative, and false-emphasis 190
Miscellaneous 191
Archaism 193-200
Occasional 193
Sustained 198
Metaphor 200
Repetition 209
Miscellaneous 213-218
Trite phrases 213
Irony 215
Superlatives without the 216
Cheap originality 217
CHAPTER IV. PUNCTUATION, pp. 219-290
General difficulties 219
General principles 224
The spot plague 226
Over-stopping 231
Under-stopping 234
Grammar and punctuation 235-263
Substantival clauses 235
Subject, &c., and verb 239
Adjectival clauses 242
Adverbial clauses 244
Parenthesis 247
Misplaced commas 248
Enumeration 250
Comma between independent sentences 254
Semicolon with subordinate members 257
Exclamations and statements 258
Exclamations and questions 259
Internal question and exclamation marks 261
Unaccountable commas 262
The colon 263
Miscellaneous 264
Dashes 266-275
General abuse 266
Legitimate uses 267
Debatable questions 269
Common misuses 274
Hyphens 275
Quotation marks 280-290
Excessive use 280
Order with stops 282
Single and double 287
Misplaced 288
Half quotation 289
PART II. p. 291 to the end
Euphony, §§ 1-10
1. Jingles 291
2. Alliteration 292
3. Repeated prepositions 293
4. Sequence of relatives 293
5. Sequence of that, &c. 294
6. Metrical prose 295
7. Sentence accent 295
8. Causal as clauses 298
9. Wens and hypertrophied members 300
10. Careless repetition 303
Quotation, &c., §§ 11-19
11. Common misquotations 305
12. Uncommon misquotations of well-known passages 305
13. Misquotation of less familiar passages 306
14. Misapplied and misunderstood quotations and phrases 306
15. Allusion 307
16. Incorrect allusion 308
17. Dovetailed and adapted quotations and phrases 308
18. Trite quotation 310
19. Latin abbreviations, &c. 311
Grammar, §§ 20-37
20. Unequal yokefellows and defective double harness 311
21. Common parts 314
22. The wrong turning 316
23. Ellipse in subordinate clauses 317
24. Some illegitimate infinitives 317
25. Split infinitives 319
26. Compound passives 319
27. Confusion with negatives 321
28. Omission of as 324
29. Other liberties taken with as 324
30. Brachylogy 326
31. Between two stools 327
32. The impersonal one 328
33. Between ... or 328
34. A placed between the adjective and its noun 329
35. Do as substitute verb 330
36. Fresh starts 330
37. Vulgarisms and colloquialisms 331
Meaning, §§ 38-48
38. Tautology 331
39. Redundancies 332
40. As to whether 333
41. Superfluous but and though 334
42. If and when 334
43. Maltreated idioms 336
44. Truisms and contradictions in terms 339
45. Double emphasis 341
46. Split auxiliaries 342
47. Overloading 343
48. Demonstrative, noun, and participle or adjective 344
Ambiguity, §§ 49-52
49. False scent 345
50. Misplacement of words 346
51. Ambiguous position 347
52. Ambiguous enumeration 348
Style, § 53 to the end
53. Antics 348
54. Journalese 351
55. Somewhat, &c. 352
56. Clumsy patching 355
57. Omission of the conjunction that 356
58. Meaningless while 357
59. Commercialisms 358
60. Pet Phrases 359
61. Also as conjunction; and &c. 359
Edition Notes
In this edition new examples have been added or substituted here and there.
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