Scarcely English

An A to Z of Assaults On Our Language

Simon Heffer

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English

Hutchinson
03 December 2024

Language: history & general works; Reference; Humour

An A-Z of terrible English by the Telegraph's former master grammarian

The English language has evolved throughout its history, and usually for good reasons. However, in recent years, egged on by social media and the ubiquity and velocity of the internet, it has been subject to some grave assaults. There appear no longer to be any rules, in an era when, thanks to the web (another word to have changed its meaning) everyone can be a published author, completely unedited and unregulated. This often has dire consequences for the English tongue.

Simon Heffer's A to Z runs though a whole litany of common confusions ('flaunt' and 'flout', 'imply' and 'infer', 'uninterested' and 'disinterested'), unidiomatic English ('fed up of', 'focus around', the use of 'impacted' in such construction as 'the loss impacted him badly'), and lazy expressions (these days every extended activity is an '-athon', every scandal is a 'Something-gate'). It bemoans some truly awful neologisms, 'infotainment' and 'funwashing' among them. And it registers the horror of those of us who do not believe that you can answer the question 'How are you?' with the words 'I'm good'.

Trenchant and sprinkled with dry wit, Scarcely English is both a chamber of horrors of bad and lazy English and a plea for accuracy, clear thinking and elegance.

By: Simon Heffer
Imprint: Hutchinson
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 223mm, Width: 147mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 375g
ISBN: 9781529152791
ISBN 10: 1529152798
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 03 December 2024
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Simon Heffer was born in 1960. He read English at Cambridge and took a PhD in modern history at that university. His previous books include- Moral Desperado- A Life of Thomas Carlyle, Like the Roman- The Life of Enoch Powell, Power and Place- The Political Consequences of King Edward VII, Nor Shall My Sword- The Reinvention of England, Vaughan Williams, Strictly English, A Short History of Power, Simply English and High Minds- The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain. In a thirty-year career in Fleet Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and is now a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.