Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Why We Can’t Manage Without Fowler

As the year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on all the wonderful books published in 2010, and in doing so, we’ve also realized there are some classics worth revisiting. The authors and friends of Oxford University Press are proud to present this series of essays, which will appear regularly until the New Year, drawing our attention to books both new and old. Below, Duane W. Roller (author of Cleopatra: A Biography) shares his love for a book that has withstood the test of time.

Sitting on my desk, never out of reach, is one of the most durable of the Oxford World’s Classics: H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage.  First published in 1926, and now in its third revised edition, it has been a staple of writers for nearly a century.  Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) was an English schoolmaster who turned to lexicography and worked on a number of Oxford University Press dictionary projects.  But he will be forever remembered for his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, usually known by professional writers just as “Fowler.”

And what is Fowler?  It is basically an encyclopedia of the usage of the English language.  It provides a variety of nuggets on how to write English properly.  If, like this writer, you can be confused between “continuous” and “continual,” Fowler lays it out.  It tells why “if and when” should be avoided, what “sabotage” really means, and that “substitute” is usually misused.  The regular bugaboos of English usage are concisely set forth: which and that, lie and lay, it’s and its.  With a copy of Fowler within reach, no one who writes has any excuse for making a mistake.

Alas, such is not the case.  In our modern world of deteriorating standards and the pervasive feeling that the internet is the source for everything, the quality of written English has fallen badly.  The columnist Gene Weingarten pointed out in the Washington Post that such deterioration has affected even those places that were thought to be immune from misuse of the language: he listed nearly a dozen major newspapers, including some of the country’s most venerable, that have had grammatical mistakes.  He was not talking about the malapropisms that pervade language today (although those are frequent too), but outright errors, such as “pronounciation,” “younger” where “youngest” is meant, or “eeks” for “ekes.”  Newspapers used to be the standard of correct English: now they seem as ignorant as anyone else.

As a university teacher for nearly 40 years and an author of 10 books, I have some vested interest in proper use of the language.  Like most teachers, I can be driven to despair at student creativeness regarding the language.  It used to be that one could gently guide them along the path to enlightenment (telling them about Fowler, among other things).  Now, one has to compete with that insidious staple of modern life: the internet.  If you tell a student that a word is misspelled or used incorrectly, the student comes back with the same incorrect usage from the internet.  Case closed.  Newspaper editors, amazingly, do the same, and my local paper, at least, ignores letters calling attention to their bad grammar.  Astonishingly, one of our most distinguished literary magazines questioned something that I said because it could not be verified on the internet.

If people would only keep a copy of Fowler handy!  Does the average newspaper editor, teacher, or professional writer do this?  As I begin work on my eleventh book – as always with paper and pencil and not on a computer – Fowler is there.  When I am uncertain about something – as happened yesterday, when I was unclear about whether I was using “impressionable” correctly – Fowler straightens me out.

So if you know someone who wants to write, and wants to write properly (the two concepts sadly are no longer identical), anyone who would take comfort in knowing that (unlike many) he or she is using the language correctly, get that person a copy of Fowler.  Maybe there is hope.

Historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar, Duane W. Roller is the author of numerous books, including Through the Pillars of Herakles, The Building Program of Herod the Great, and most recently Cleopatra: A Biography. You can read his previous OUPblog post and listen to a podcast series here.

Recent Comments

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by BC Kumar and Oxford Classics, Lauren. Lauren said: It doesn't get any Fowler than this: http://ow.ly/3qDiz […]

  2. Shelley

    Poor usage is an extension of the idea that “authority” is always suspect.

  3. duane w roller

    Well said, Shelley. Another version of the same idea is that “anyone is an expert,” something particularly infuriating to those of us in the teaching profession.

  4. Daniel

    I’m an ESL teacher from the US, and I have to admit I’ve only learned proper English since I started reading OUP English textbooks. Now when I talk to my American friends, I’m shocked at some of the ungrammatical things they say! Even the newspapers, as the author says, make some ridiculous mistakes. But is the English language really going downhill, or is it simply changing?

  5. duane w roller

    Daniel, this is always the question, of course. Languages do change, and they tend to simplify: primitive languages are far more complex than modern ones. Greek verbs, for example, have three voices and six principal parts (English has two and three, respectively.) Yet at the same time not every change is for the good, and some will not stand the test of time. The distinction between “lie” and “lay” is probably disappearing. The past of “go” vanished long ago and was replaced by “went” (the past of “wend”). But there has to be some discrimination between what is legitimate change and what is simply ignorance: misspelling a word does not make it proper usage.

Comments are closed.