Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/32

18 It is to the Convention, therefore, that reference must be made for an intelligence of the principles on which the Egyptian Government has acted during the present war.—Times. (understanding)

No one can say why intelligence should never be followed by an objective genitive, as grammarians call this; but nearly every one knows, apart from the technical term, that it never is. Idiom is an autocrat, with whom it is always well to keep on good terms.

Easier to reproduce, in its concision, is the description of the day.—H. . (conciseness)

Concision is a term in theology, to which it may well be left. In criticism, though its use is increasing, it has still an exotic air.

7. Simple love of the long word.

The wide public importance of these proposals (customs regulations) has now been conceived in no desultory manner.—Guernsey Advertiser.

We have touched shortly upon some four dozen of what we call malaprops. Now possible malaprops, in our extended sense, are to be reckoned not by the dozen, but by the million. Moreover, out of our four dozen, not more than some half a dozen are uses that it is worth any one's while to register individually in his mind for avoidance. The conclusion of which is this: we have made no attempt at cataloguing the mistakes of this sort that must not be committed; every one must construct his own catalogue by care, observation, and the resolve to use no word whose meaning he is not sure of—even though that resolve bring on him the extreme humiliation of now and then opening the dictionary. Our aim has been, not to make a list, but to inculcate a frame of mind.  

Most people of literary taste will say on this point 'It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh'. They are Liberal-Conservatives, their liberalism being general and theoretic, their conservatism particular and practical. And indeed, if no new words were to appear, it would be a sign that the language was moribund; 