Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/179

Rh Those, who are urging with most ardour what are called the greatest benefits of mankind..

Benefits of the benefactor, but to the beneficiary.

4. Superfluous prepositions, whether due to ignorance of idiom, negligence, or mistaken zeal for accuracy.

After than, the writer might have gone on if it occupied itself with this; but if he means that, he must give it in full.

5. Necessary prepositions omitted.

The Lady Henrietta...wrote him regularly through his bankers, and once in a while he wrote her.—.

Write without to will now pass in commercial letters only; elsewhere, we can say 'I write you a report, a letter', but neither 'I will write you' simply, nor 'I wrote you that there was danger'. That is, we must only omit the to when you not only is the indirect object, but is unmistakably so at first sight. It may be said that I write you is good old English. So is he was a-doing of it; I guess is good Chaucerian. But in neither case can the appeal to a dead usage—dead in polite society, or in England—justify what is a modern vulgarism.

6. Compound prepositions and conjunctions.

The increasing use of these is much to be regretted. They, and the love for abstract expression with which they are closely allied, are responsible for much of what is flaccid, diffuse, and nerveless, in modern writing. They are generally,