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  EDline Vol. 7, no. 31     (3 February 2002)

  Editorial mailing list (digest version)
  Published by the Electric Editors
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  Contents:

         Q & A
  [2rm]  So do we use Hart, Fowler, Gower etc.
            [Offshoot of [2rk] Conventions for scare quotes]
  [2rn]  Could/Couldn't care less

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---[2]-- Q & A --------------------------------------------------


** [2rm] So do we use Hart, Fowler, Gower etc.
            [Offshoot of [2rk] Conventions for scare quotes]

         Date: Tues, 29 Jan 2002
         From: Chris Shaw, chris.shaw00@btopenworld.com

Michael Stone wrote:

>> Bill Bryson's The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words.
>
> The book seems to be out of print, at least in the U.S., but I
> saw a notice for "Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words" to
> be published by Broadway Books in August, 2002. There was no
> indication as to whether this is a new edition.

Bryson's book was reissued by Penguin in 1997 under the title
Troublesome Words.


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** [2rn] Could/Couldn't care less

         Date: Thurs, 31 Jan 2002
         From: Zarina Hock, zhock@ncte.org

For those who worry about languages getting "corrupted": Scholars
of language history assure us that this is a dubious concept.
Languages change; they even die out. But "corrupted"? That
implies a value judgement (or judgment) that hasn't proved to be
correct. 

As R.W. Burchfield says in his preface to _The New Fowler's
Modern English Usage_(1996), "there are many varieties of
standard English, . . . [and] pessimists are writing gloomily
about declining standards, the loss of valuable distinctions in
meaning, the introduction of unappetising vogue words and slang."

He concludes: "I am sure that the English language is not
collapsing--more severe changes have come about in past centuries
than any that have occurred in the twentieth century--and in the
English language, used well, we still have, and will continue to
have, a tool of extraordinary strength and flexibility." I tend
to agree with him. 

Corruption? I must say I could care less.


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