The New Fowlers Modern English Usage (3rd （新福勒的现代英语用法(3）.pdf

. The New Fowlers Modern English Usage (3rd ed.) by R.W. Burchfield Oxford University Press Book review published in Queensland Bar News, June 1999 . But it is acceptable to begin a sentence with a conjunction? May I be permitted to boldly split the infinitive (boldly to split or to split boldly)? Would I be guilty of an unpardonable solecism if, describing an hypothetical situation within my control, I were to use the subjunctive rather than indicative mood (was to use)? Is it valid to criticise an author failing to use the possessive case in respect or a gerund or verbal noun (an authors failing to use)? Is the temptation to place a preposition at the end of a sentence something which one should struggle against (against which one should struggle)? For 70 years, Modern English Usage , first published by H.W. Fowler in 1926, has been the standard reference to which educated English-speaking people turn for guidance on these and similar questions. It was an unashamedly prescriptive book, which proceeded from the assumption that there is a single correct way to speak and write, and that all deviations from Fowlers orthodoxy are either vulgar, colloquial, dialectical (which included Scottish, Irish, American and Australian usage, as well as usage common in parts of England outside the Home Counties), obsolete, or simply wrong. Fowlers work was the product of an age of certainty. On the occasion of his retirement on 13 April 1964, Sir Owen Dixon spoke of his predecessor, Sir Samuel Griffith, as having a legal mind of the Austinian age, representing the t