ERRORS IN THE USE OF ENGLISH. BY THE LATE WILLIAM B. HODGSON, LL.D., FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS AND PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. AMERICAN REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1886. EDITOR'S NOTE. THE appreciation of Dr. Hodgson's excellent manual at home was shown by its passing to a second edition within a few months. Such success was deserved by its orderly arrangement of the different classes of errors to be avoided, its wide range of examples, and its lucid and learned exposition of principles. The surprising mistakes quoted from many writers of high reputation, often destructive of the meaning, show that there are few who might not derive benefit from the careful study of such a manual. The work of the editor would doubtless have been lighter had the author lived to bestow the requisite care upon the book in its passage through the press. No radical changes have been made in its contents, but some superfluities have been removed, including a few words in the "Vocabulary," where the single instance of misuse given in each case was not typical, but evidently the result of individual carelessness, and a considerable number of merely cumulative examples, especially from newspapers. It may be thought that there are still under some of the heads many more examples than are necessary; but repetition is an essential factor in "teaching by example," and a particular form of error is apt to appear under many variations, each of which requires careful discrimination. In some instances, where it seemed to the editor that the suggested correction of an error was not quite clear, he has made what he considered the proper modification. The original work done by the editor in the course of his revision is divisible into three parts. First, he has inserted in various places bracketed and signed remarks, in the text and in foot-notes, giving his own views of the points in question, which sometimes differ both from those of the author or the writers cited by him and from the general drift of current opinion. Most of these are pointed out in the index, both under the particular topics and under the heading "Editor's remarks." Secondly, he has inserted in the last three parts head-lines marking the divisions and subdivisions of the subjects |
