The Complete Plain Words is a style guide for English written by Sir Ernest Gowers and published in 1954. It has never been out of print. It comprises expanded and revised versions of two pamphlets that he wrote at the request of Sir Edward Bridges (then head of the Civil Service); Plain Words, published in 1948 as a two-shilling pamphlet aimed at civil servants and An ABC of Plain Words which was published in 1951.
The Complete Plain Words was revised by Sir Bruce Fraser in 1973, and by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut in 1986 (ISBN 0-11-701121-5).
Famous quotes containing the words complete and/or plain:
“Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,
But that his simple truth must be abused
With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)