A Plea for the Queen's English? RU joking?

Why a man should not allow his wife to call him 'love', and further advice from a tragic hero of 1860s style

A Plea for the Queen's English? RU joking?


The English language is at it again. Three hundred years after Jonathan Swift issued a plea for a method of "ascertaining and fixing our language for ever", internet chatrooms and the likes of Facebook are causing a generation to break the rules in new and possibly permanent ways. According to a survey last month, two-thirds of the 18- to 24-year-olds questioned thought "variant" spellings that made it easier to type at speed were acceptable.

Into this unstable environment steps the Guardian's latest style guide, and, like an immaculately turned out child on its first day of school, one fears it may suffer at the hands of bullies in the modern English playground. (Stile gide? RU joking bruv?) Or, perhaps worse, be ignored and forced to eat its sandwiches on its own.

It is not the first time that attempts to "fix" the language have been made, against overwhelming odds. The British Library's Evolving English exhibition, showing until April, reveals how a succession of impassioned tragic heroes have tried to impose order.

The exhibition includes a selection of early style manuals. They are less comprehensive than today's offering, but what they lose in utility, they gain in belligerence.

One that stands out is A Plea for the Queen's English, written by Henry Alford, dean of Canterbury, in 1863. Glowing behind a perspex shield, it is open at page 75, where Alford concludes lengthy and not very illuminating instructions on the correct uses of "lay" and "lie" with the observation: "Eton men, for some reason or other, are especially liable to confuse these two verbs."

After some negotiations over a reader's pass, and a couple of days' wait while the library's only other copy was delivered from an archive in Yorkshire, I found myself with the slim volume in my hands.

Alford starts his little guide with a grand appraisal of the subject he is taking on: "What a history in the earth's atmosphere, seeing that all words spoken, from Adam's first until now, are still vibrating on its unresting medium!" That, by the way, is the only exclamation mark he allows himself in 200 pages.

After having a pop at a writer of popular novels ("Mr Dickens speaks in one of his works of 'shutting too'; in the expression 'shutting to', it is the preposition, and not the adverb, that is used"), he gets round to what one suspects is his chief bugbear:

"It is in the newspapers, and especially provincial newspapers, that most frequent faults in spelling are found ... Sometimes their editors are men of education, aided by a very inefficient staff ... and sometimes they are half-educated men aspiring to the use of words which they do not understand ... We were informed one day last year, in the Evening Star, London penny paper, that the Pope went to the basilisk of St Peter's ..."

At the end of a bad week in which the Guardian invented the US state of "Alsaka" in a headline, and a fishy reference to "Tuna Turner" found its way into a picture caption, this makes painful reading. So, in the interests of self improvement, here are some highlights from the rest of Alford's guide:

admiration, note of

"A note of admiration consists, as we know, of a point with an upright line suspended over it, strongly suggestive of a gentleman jumping off the ground with amazement. These 'shrieks' are scattered up and down the page without mercy."


"We say and write Bass's Ale, not Bass' Ale."


"There is a use of the word 'but', primarily to be found in our provincial newspapers, but now and then 'leaking upward' into our more permanent literature. It is when that conjugation is made the connecting link between two adjectives which do not require any such joining … Even while I write, my train stops at a station on the Great Western Railway where passengers are invited by an advertisement to take a trip to Glasgow to witness the 'wild but grand scenery of Scotland' ..."


"The great enemies to understanding anything printed in our language." Alford remembers with satisfaction swatting more than a thousand of these grammatical mosquitoes while editing a Greek translation, and recalls his protests over liberties taken with the commas in one of his own manuscripts: "The publisher quietly answered me that punctuation was always left to the compositors. And a precious mess they make of it."

dangling participles

"An example from one of our provincial newspapers, recounting one of Mr Glaister's balloon ascents: 'After partaking of a hearty breakfast, the balloon was brought into town amidst the cheers and congratulations of the major part of the inhabitants.' They may well have applauded a balloon which had performed so unheard of a feat."

feminine substantive

"I expect we shall soon see 'groceress' and 'tea-dealeress' and licensed 'vendress of stamps' …"

nouns as verbs

" 'The ship remained to coal', 'the church is being pewed' ... Verbs thus formed will carry themselves into use, in spite of the protests of purists. Some years ago, precise scholars used to exclaim against the verb 'to experience'."

"open up"

"A favourite with our newspapers ... I am even now unable to see why the simple word 'open' would not be better."


" 'Lord Derby went out of office, and was replaced by Lord Palmerston.' This, as now used, conveys the meaning "succeeded by Lord Palmerston". But put the sentence before our grandfathers, and they would have understood it to mean that Lord Derby went out of office, and Lord Palmerston put him in again ..." (continues for several pages)

speaking, advice on

"A more offensive habit cannot be imagined than a man who allows his wife to call him 'Sammy love' … All is out. He has a wife who does not know better, and he has never taught her better. The skeleton in their cupboard is a child's rattle. A man may as well suck his thumb all his life, as talk, or allow to be talked to him, such drivelling nonsense. Never let the world look through these chinks into the boudoir. One soft tone, from lips on which wisdom dwells, is worth all the loveys and deareys which become the unmeaning expletives of the vulgar ..." (continues for several pages)


"The indefinite relative pronoun ought to be the normative case to the verb ..." (stay awake at the back)

writing, advice on

"Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual industry; let a home be a home, not a residence ... The only way to shine, even in this false world, is to be modest and unassuming. Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straightforwardness are."