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.
The Wrong Word Dictionary: 2,500 Most Commonly Confused Words (2nd Edition) provides correct usage for more than 2,500 commonly misused words in a concise and accessible handbook that assures, insures, and ensures that anyone who wants to communicate accurately and effectively chooses the right word every time. For each entry in this reference, the difference between the words is explained, and in most cases, a short and simple sentence example showing the correct usage is provided. The word definitions provided are intended strictly as aids and not dictionary definitions.
During most of the 20th century, the classical Saussurean distinction between language use and language structure remained untranscendable in much linguistic theory. The dominant view, propagated in particular by generative grammar, was that there are structural facts and usage facts, and that in principle the former are independent of, and can be described in complete isolation from, the latter. With the appearance of
functional-cognitive approaches on the scene, this view has been challenged.
