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Usage Notes (&)
Interest in questions of good usage is widespread among English speakers
everywhere, and many issues are hotly debated. In the
Oxford Dictionary of
English
, traditional issues have been reappraised, and guidance is given on various
points, old and new. The aim is to help people to use the language more accurately,
more clearly, and more elegantly, and to give information and offer reassurance in
the face of some of the more baffling assertions about ‘correctness’ that are
sometimes made.
This reappraisal has involved looking carefully at evidence of actual usage (in the
Oxford English Corpus, the citations collected by the Oxford Reading Programme,
and other sources) in order to find out where mistakes are actually being made,
and where confusion and ambiguity actually arise. The issues on which journalists
and others tend to comment have been reassessed and a judgement made about
whether their comments are justified.
From the 15th century onwards, traditionalists have been objecting to particular
senses of certain English words and phrases, for example ‘aggravate’, ‘due to’, and
‘hopefully’. Certain grammatical structures, too, have been singled out for adverse
comment, notably the split infinitive and the use of a preposition at the end of a
clause. Some of these objections are founded on very dubious arguments, for
example the notion that English grammatical structures should precisely parallel
those of Latin or that meaning change of any kind is inherently suspect. For
examples of notes on such issues, see preposition, due and aggravate.
The usage notes in the
Oxford Dictionary of English
take the view that English is
English, not Latin, and that English is, like all languages, subject to change. Good
usage is usage that gets the writer's message across, not usage that conforms to
some arbitrary rules that fly in the face of historical fact or current evidence. The
editors of the
Oxford Dictionary of English
are well aware that the prescriptions of
pundits in the past have had remarkably little practical effect on the way the
language is actually used. A good dictionary reports the language as it is, not as
the editors (or anyone else) would wish it to be, and the usage notes must give
guidance that accords with observed facts about present-day usage.
This is not to imply that the issues are straightforward or that there are simple
solutions, however. Much of the debate about use of language is highly political and
controversy is, occasionally, inevitable. Changing social attitudes have stigmatized
long-established uses such as the word ‘man’ to denote the human race in general,
for example, and have highlighted the absence of a gender-neutral singular
pronoun meaning both ‘he’ and ‘she’ (for which purpose ‘they’ is increasingly being
used). Similarly, words such as ‘race’ and ‘native’ are now associated with particular
problems of sensitivity in use, and the ways that disability is referred to have come
under close examination. The usage notes in the
Oxford Dictionary of English
offer
information and practical advice on such issues. For examples, see man, native
and disabled.
Standard English
Unless otherwise stated, the words and senses recorded in this dictionary are all
part of standard English; that is, they are in normal use in both speech and writing
everywhere in the world, at many different levels of formality, ranging from official
documents to casual conversation. Some words, however, are appropriate only in
particular contexts, and these are labelled accordingly. The technical term for a
particular level of use in language is register.
The
Oxford Dictionary of English
uses the following register labels:
formal: normally used only in writing, in contexts such as official documents.
informal: normally used only in contexts such as conversations or letters
among friends.
dated: no longer used by the majority of English speakers, but still
encountered occasionally, especially among the older generation.
archaic:very old-fashioned language, not in ordinary use at all today, but
sometimes used to give a deliberately old-fashioned effect or found
in works of the past that are still widely read.
historical: still used today, but only to refer to some practice or artefact that is
no longer part of the modern world, e.g. baldric and almoner.
literary:found only or mainly in literature written in an ‘elevated' style.