H.W. Fowler Style
@HenryWFowler
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Daily tweets on writing, in the spirit (and sometimes the words) of Fowler's Modern English Usage but chiefly for American writers. Alter ego of @MatthewJFranck
U.S.A.
Joined April 2014
E.g., “The sentence that I write here, which may or may not include both kinds of clauses, should conform to this rule."
When using relative pronouns in adjectival clauses, use "that" in restrictive clauses and "which" in non-restrictive ones.
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We’ve all screamed like that.
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The correct term, @nytimes, is “appointed.” It’s a 3-step process: nomination, confirmation, appointment. All 3 are necessary to make a judge. (@washingtonpost got this right.)
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Yes, @washingtonpost, we can count the seats, rather than measuring their mass or volume. But the standard idiom is “one less.”
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It seems some writers need reminding: .To cow is to frighten another. To cower is to experience fear of another, typically in the other’s presence. So one does not cower other people, and one does not cow before others.
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It takes a fine discernment to tell whether a period has been italicized.
If your lawyer makes mistakes like this, report them to the bar.
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The massively iconic—and very unique!—@GeorgeWill is one of the only writers who can feel this vibe.
washingtonpost.com
The massive vibe shift is one of the only big developments in American English. In fact, it’s iconic.
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Dismayed to see a scholar I admire, published by a leading university press, describing rocks as “conical-shaped.” This is redundant, for “conical” means “cone-shaped.”.
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As the original shows at the link you’ve provided, @thedispatch, what Acton said was that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” not “tends to corrupt.”
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Lehrer was better than this inane repetition, @PostOpinions. His lyric was “Do whatever steps you want if / you have cleared them with the pontiff.”
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Only a tweet, so let the writer remain anonymous. But it illustrates a tendency to get this idiom backward. The proper form is "I don't know why you would [less bad thing], let alone [really bad thing]."
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Gary Saul Morson on translation, @hedgehogreview.
hedgehogreview.com
One must translate the work, not the words on the page. They are not the same.
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RT @ChrchCurmudgeon: Armstrong was going to leave Aldrin on the moon alone, but that would have been kind of a buzzkill.
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He's right.
No real thoughts on the content of this but Mamdani makes a grammatical mistake here that I truly hate: he says that he is celebrating "Rama and I's marriage". There is no world in which "I's" is a legitimate possessive in English. The possessive of "I" is "my". Never say "I's".
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RT @jaynordlinger: I just read one article that said "falsely smearing." There is no need for "falsely" there. I read another that said "de….
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