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Pronouns Reference library
Garner’s Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...form because of that interchangeability. But me is much more common today in a sentence like that one. Ernest Gowers gave sound advice here: “The prepositional use of than is now so common colloquially ( He is older than me; they travelled much faster than us ) that the bare subjective pronoun in such a position strikes the readers as pedantic, and it is better either to give it a more natural appearance by supplying it with a verb or to dodge the difficulty by not using an inflective pronoun at all” ( FMEU2 at 620). Following are several good...
Prepositions Reference library
Garner’s Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
... 164, 167 ( 1950 ). • “The peculiarities of legal English are often used as a stick to beat the official with .” Ernest Gowers , Plain Words: Their ABC 13 ( 1954 ). • “In the structure of the ‘coherent sentence,’ such particles are necessary, and, strip the sentence as bare as you will, they cannot be entirely dispensed with .” G.H. Vallins , The Best English 30 ( 1960 ). • “Poetry, as Dr. Johnson said, is untranslatable and hence, if it is good, preserves the language it is written in .” Anthony Burgess , A Mouthful of Air 156 ( 1992 ). • ...
Phrasal Adjectives Reference library
Garner’s Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...to launch Dimension Films, a division devoted to the revenue-producing horror- and teen-movie market.” Ken Auletta , “Beauty and the Beast,” New Yorker , 16 Dec. 2002 , at 65, 75. • “It was a four- or five-times-a-year indulgence, if that.” Arthur Miller , “The Bare Manuscript,” New Yorker , 16 Dec. 2002 , at 82, 85. Occasionally writers omit the hyphens, resulting almost invariably in readers’ puzzlement—e.g.: “They lived in the small city of Apopka, Florida, located in the fern and foliage growing region [read instead in the fern- and...
Punctuation Reference library
Garner’s Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...anniversary.” Victor Erofeyev , “The Russian God,” New Yorker , 16 Dec. 2002 , at 56. • “She tried not to think that all his verses about her—the sonnets, the villanelles, the haiku—were merely ploys to prepare her for this ridiculous rubber balloon.” Arthur Miller , “The Bare Manuscript,” New Yorker , 16 Dec. 2002 , at 82, 86. Sometimes, perhaps as a result of an ill-founded prejudice against dashes, writers try to make commas function in their place. Often this doesn't work. In fact, the commas can result in a comma splice (one of two types of ...
spartan Reference library
Garner’s Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...life on the prairie> . E.g.: “He doesn't like the idea of Elke entering his home and seeing how bare he keeps it, how spartan his life is.” Donna Jo Napoli & Richard Tchen , Spinners 85 ( 1999 ). The word sparse means “not densely packed; scattered” <sparse trees on the plain> <a sparsely populated area> . Undoubtedly through mistaken sound-association, people have begun misusing sparse for spartan —e.g.: • “It is to be her retirement home, so she takes only a few of her worldly possessions and intends to live a sparse [read spartan ] life.”...
existential Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (2 ed.)
...There must be a God There seems to be no solution These are called bare existential clauses , which do not have a non-existential counterpart (cf. An emergency is ). An extended existential clause contains additional material (called the extension ), such as a locative ( 1 ) or temporal phrase, a relative clause, a to -infinitive , or an ‐ing clause : There is a mouse in the loft There was a fire last week There has been nothing in the papers about this Can there be life on other planets? There’s one student who brings her dog to class There...
construct Reference library
Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...to seminaries of learning’. The main stress was moved to the second syllable at some indeterminable point in the first half of the 20c. 4 Examples of the commonest uses of construe : He could not construe the simplest German poem without the help of a translation —M. Baring, 1924 ; His life could be construed…as a series of delinquent approaches to virtue —V. S. Pritchett, 1980 ; She said nothing to me which could not be construed as loyal admiration —P. Ackroyd, 1983 ; He asked his interrogators to specify anything he had written or said which could be...
prepositions Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style
...particles are necessary, and, strip the sentence as bare as you will, they cannot be entirely dispensed with ” ( G. H. Vallins , The Best English , 1960) . • “It was the boys in the back room, after all, whom Marlene Dietrich felt comfortable drinking with ” ( N.Y. Times ). See which & that . Redundant Prepositions. Writers often repeat prepositions unnecessarily when there are intervening phrases or clauses. E.g.: “Sue is survived by her beloved husband, Roy C. Walker , with whom she shared her life with for 63 years” ( Austin American-Statesman )....
pronouns Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style
...form because of that interchangeability. But me is much more common today in a sentence like that one. Ernest Gowers gave sound advice here: “[T]he prepositional use of than is now so common colloquially ( He is older than me; they travelled much faster than us ) that the bare subjective pronoun in such a position strikes the readers as pedantic, and it is better either to give it a more natural appearance by supplying it with a verb or to dodge the difficulty by not using an inflective pronoun at all” ( MEU2 ). Following are three good examples...
not Reference library
Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (4 ed.)
...s. 6 Superfluous not . 7 not only …( but (also) ). 8 Not I or not me ? Case of following pronoun. 9 not but. 10 Unusual placement of not . 11 better not, best not. 12 whether or not. 1 Normal uses. These include the types (i) ‘auxiliary verb + not + bare infinitive’ ( I do not believe that Shelley could have written these lines; one should not rule out the possibility ); (ii) negation of an adjective or noun ( appearances that are and are not identical; I’m not a tyrant ); (iii) not followed by an adverb ( not entirely, not...
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