Robert Hartwell Fiske
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Robert Hartwell Fiske
Robert Hartwell Fiske (March 5, 1948 – April 25, 2016) was a writer, editor, and publisher of ''The Vocabula Review'', an online journal about the English language, from 1999 until his death in 2016. He wrote several books about grammar and usage, including ''To the Point: A Dictionary of Concise Writing'' (Norton, 2014), ''The Dictionary of Unendurable English'' (Scribner, 2011), ''The Dimwit's Dictionary'' (Marion Street Press, 2011), and ''Elegant English'' (Vocabula Communications Company, 2014). The purpose of Fiske's site Vocabula, according to Fiske, was to encourage clear English and to discourage careless English. Among the schools which had bought licenses to the site were Columbia University, Princeton University, and Stanford University. After Fiske's death of melanoma in 2016 at the age of 68, essayist Joseph Epstein said that Fiske was "an unknown soldier in that most glorious and hopeless of wars, that against the ignorant and abusive use of language." He stated tha ...
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The Vocabula Review
''The Vocabula Review'' was a monthly electronic magazine about the state of the English language. Publication The journal was published online by the Vocabula Communications Company. Online access was by subscription. All previous issues were accessible online. The editor-in-chief and publisher was Robert Hartwell Fiske. He was the editor of two collections of essays and poems that were previously published in ''The Vocabula Review'': ''Vocabula Bound 1: Outbursts, Insights, Explanations, and Oddities'' and ''Vocabula Bound 2: Our Wresting, Writhing Tongue''. Fiske also authored ''The Dimwit's Dictionary'', a volume on over-used English words. The magazine's guiding philosophy of the English language tended to be anti-linguist and prescriptive Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Somet ...
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Grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology (linguistics), morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and Grammar#Theoretical frameworks, theoretical grammar. Fluency, Fluent speakers of a variety (linguistics), language variety or ''lect'' have effectively internalized these constraints, the vast majority of which – at least in the case of one's First language, native language(s) – are language acquisition, acquired not by conscious study or language teaching, instruction but by hearing other speakers. Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning a language later ...
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Usage
The usage of a language is the ways in which its written and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a language works or (should work) in the abstract. For instance, Fowler characterized usage as "the way in which a word or phrase is normally and correctly used" and as the "points of grammar, syntax, style, and the choice of words." In the descriptive tradition of language analysis, by way of contrast, "correct" tends to mean functionally adequate for the purposes of the speaker or writer using it, and adequately idiomatic to be accepted by the listener or reader; usage is also, however, a concern for the prescriptive tradition, for which "correctness" is a matter of arbitrating style. Common usage may be used as one of the criteria of laying out prescriptive norms for codified standard language usage. Modern dictionaries are not generally pr ...
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Joseph Epstein (writer)
Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937) is an American writer who was the editor of the magazine ''The American Scholar'' from 1975 to 1997. His essays and stories have appeared in books and other publications. Early life Epstein was born to Maurice and Belle Epstein in Chicago, Illinois on January 9, 1937. He graduated from Senn High School and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He served in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960, and received a bachelor of arts in absentia from the University of Chicago in 1959. Career Epstein's essay "Who Killed Poetry?", published in ''Commentary'' in 1988, generated discussion in the literary community decades after its publication. Admirers of Epstein's writings include Jacques Barzun, Philip Larkin, Tom Wolfe, William Barrett, Sidney Hook, Herman Wouk, Gordon S. Wood, Norman Podhoretz, John Gross, Dan Jacobson, Edward Shils, Saul Bellow, Gene Siskel, George Will, William F. Buckley Jr., Philip Kaufman, John Podhoretz, ...
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Linguistic Prescriptivism
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes informed by linguistic purism, such normative practices often suggest that some usages are incorrect, inconsistent, illogical, lack communicative effect, or are of low aesthetic value, even in cases where such usage is more common than the prescribed usage. They may also include judgments on socially proper and politically correct language use. Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language, teach what a particular society or sector of a society perceives as a correct or proper form, or advise on effective and stylistically felicitous communication. If usage preferences are conservative, prescription might appear resistant to language change; if radical, it may produce neologisms. Prescriptive approaches to language are oft ...
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Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences); semantics (meaning); morphology (structure of words); phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages); phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language); and pragmatics (how social con ...
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National Post
The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.National Post to eliminate Monday print edition
, June 19, 2017. Retrieved June 28, 2017
The newspaper is distributed in the provinces of ,

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The Globe And Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the ''Toronto Star'' in overall weekly circulation because the ''Star'' publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the ''Globe'' does not. ''The Globe and Mail'' is regarded by some as Canada's " newspaper of record". ''The Globe and Mail''s predecessors, '' The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' were both established in the 19th century. The former was established in 1844, while the latter was established in 1895 through a merger of ''The Toronto Mail'' and the ''Toronto Empire''. In 1936, ''The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' merged to form ''The Globe and Mail''. The newspaper was acquired by FP Publications in 1965, who later sold the paper to the Thomson Corporation in 1980. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast ...
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1948 Births
Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British Railways. * January 4 – Burma gains its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming an independent republic, named the ''Union of Burma'', with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President, and U Nu its first Prime Minister. * January 5 ** Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (''Tournament of Roses Parade'' and the ''Rose Bowl Game''). ** The first Kinsey Reports, Kinsey Report, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'', is published in the United States. * January 7 – Mantell UFO incident: Kentucky Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell crashes while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object. * January 12 – Mahatma Gandhi begins his fast-unto-death in Delhi, to stop communal violence during the Partition of India. * ...
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2016 Deaths
This is a list of deaths of notable people, organised by year. New deaths articles are added to their respective month (e.g., Deaths in ) and then linked here. 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 See also * Lists of deaths by day The following pages, corresponding to the Gregorian calendar, list the historical events, births, deaths, and holidays and observances of the specified day of the year: Footnotes See also * Leap year * List of calendars * List of non-standard ... * Deaths by year {{DEFAULTSORT:deaths by year ...
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American Magazine Editors
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ...
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American Essayists
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * B ...
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