King's English

The King's English is a classic book on English usage and grammar. This second edition Fowler brothers, Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler, and published in 1908, and thus pre-dates by almost years Modern English Usage, which was written by Henry alone after Francis's death in 1918. This is a facsimile version of the 1922 printing by Oxford University Press.

The King's English is less like a dictionary than Modern English Usage; it consists of longer articles on more general topics such as vocabulary, syntax and punctuation, and draws heavily on examples from many sources throughout. One of its sections is a systematic description of the appropriate uses of shall and will. The third and last edition was published in 1931, by which time Modern English Usage had superseded it in popularity.

Because all living languages continually evolve, the book is now considered outdated in some respects; and some of the Fowlers' opinions about correct English usage are at times incorrect with regard to contemporary standards. For example, the Fowlers disapprove of the word "concision" on the grounds that it had a technical meaning in theology, "to which it may well be left"; although "concision" is now a common synonym for "conciseness", it is still an ugly word. The Fowlers also criticised the use of standpoint and just how much (as in "Just how much more of this can we take?"), describing them as undesirable "Americanisms", but both are now common in British English. The book nevertheless remains a benchmark for usage. Every wordlover should have a copy.

Fowler was for 17 years a teacher at Sedbergh School. He then lived and worked in London as a freelance writer for four years, before going to Guernsey to form a remarkable successful writing partnership with his brother Francis. Described by one of his pupils at Sedbergh as 'a man of great fastidiousness (moral and intellectual)', Fowler was a private scholar and keen sportsman, living a simple life in Guernsey, yet his remarkable guide to English usage has become one of the most celebrated reference books of the twentieth century.