Words [antikvár]

Introduction Words: A User's Guide is a practical guide to English usage. It gives clear recommendations about using the language to ensure that the message you send - whether you are writing an essay, an email or a business presentation - is clear and understandable. The book considers questions of usage, levels of formality, pronunciation, spelling and style. Although it is primarily addressed to the British English market, many entries focus on differences In usage between British English (BE) and American English (AE). Non-native speakers will also find the book invaluable as it presents contemporary English usage in a systematic way. Most entries consider pairs or groups of words that may be confused. Each entry Is structured as groups of words (technically called 'headwords') that sound alike, look alike or are frequently mixed up. For Instance, when a writer describes a group of people on a beach, are they naturalists watching out for unusual creatures in the sand, or naturists wanting to soak up the sun without leaving any pale patches where their clothing has been? Is the bomb disposal squad trying to defuse the mine in the harbour, or diffuse it over a wide area? A monarch in the modern world reigns, but the Prime Minister often holds the reins of power. Some will ask what purpose a guide such as this one can possibly serve in an age of technological advancement and the ubiquitous spellchecker. Well, both defuse and diffuse from the paragraph above would have passed clean through any spellchecker. They are, after all, spelt correctly. It is in the area of usage - how to employ these seemingly close but quite different words - that some will need guidance. Words: A User's Guide does exactly this: its comparative approach allows you to see immediately the differences between words in each entry. It provides clear and straightforward definitions of each of the headwords, and each definition is followed by examples of how the word can be used in a sentence. All of the examples we offer are adapted from databases of contemporary English, such as dictionaries or the British National Corpus - a vast collection of 100 million words of English in actual use, taken from many varied sources: novels, newspapers, recorded conversations and lectures. This comparative approach is what sets this book apart from dictionaries. There are few that question the excellence of most dictionaries on the market such as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (also available online http:// www.ldoceonline.com), but dictionaries are limited by the structure of an alphabetical listing of single words. Consequently it is difficult for them to focus on the contrast between words that are frequently confused but may be a hundred or more pages apart: abuse and misuse, for instance. Language usage is one of the most hotly debated subjects in the English-speaking world. Scarcely a week goes by without some newspaper or other printing an angry letter from a reader complaining about the so-called 'greengrocer's apostrophe', or a similar example of (alleged) language misuse. Whole books are devoted to attacks on modern trends, such as text speak (or should that be txt spk?), and their writers seem to assume that no worse