A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Ranging from plurals and literary technique to the distinctions among like words (homonyms, synonyms, etc.), to the use of foreign terms, it became the standard for most style guides that followed; thus, the 1926 first edition remains in print despite the existence of the 1965 second edition, and the 1996 and 2004 printings of the third edition, which was mostly rewritten as a usage dictionary incorporating corpus linguistics data. To its users, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is informally known by the names Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler’s.

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