Usage and Abusage

Usage and Abusage is designed, not to compete with H.W. Fowler's Modern English Usage (that would be a fatuous attempt - and impossible), but to supplement it and to complement it, and yet to write a book that should be less Olympian and less austere. Even where the two books cover common ground, as inevitably they do occasionally, I have approached the subjects from a different angle and treated them in a different manner. To increase its usefulness and to bring this guide up to date, much new matter has been added in the fifth (1957) edition. On the other hand, much inessential detail has been removed.