Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (68 page)
1. Those which use a plural differing from the singular,
e.g., bird
and its compounds,
dog, goat, mouse, owl
and
rat
. But when some of these words are preceded by
wild, native, sea, mountain
, etc., they may be unchanged in the plural,
e.g., wild pig, native horse
and
band of musk ox
.
2. Those which take plural forms in ordinary speech, but may be used in the singular “in the language of those who hunt or fish,”
e.g., antelope, beaver, buffalo, duck, hare, muskrat, quail
and
fox
.
3. Those that are unchanged in form in the plural,
e.g., bison, deer, grouse, moose
and
sheep
.
4. Those that use a different plural form “only to signify diversity in kind or species,”
e.g., trouts of the Rocky Mountains, fishes of the Atlantic
.
5
Down to the advent of the New Deal the section on abbreviations, in the average American style book, filled only a few pages, and even the Style Manual of the Government Printing Office
1
exhausted the subject in six and a half. But now the number of them, chiefly emanating from Washington, is so enormous that the Manual refers its customers to a separate reference work, the United States Government Manual.
2
During the four years of American participation in World War II the Army and Navy spewed them out diligently, and so many new civil government agencies were set up, each with a long name and each name with an abbreviation, that no copy-reader in the country could keep up with them. Worse, more came pouring in from England and even more from Russia, and by 1945 George Erlie Shankle had assembled enough recognized abbreviations to fill a volume of 207 pages, set in small type in double columns.
3
The Russian contribution had found a recorder eight years before,
4
and that of the English helped fill a book of 104 pages by 1942.
5
All such volumes, alas, were incomplete, for new abbreviations came out faster than any press could run; moreover, the compilers, in sheer desperation, omitted many of the abbreviations used for the names of divisions, sub-divisions and ultradivisions in the new mobs of jobholders,
e.g., EIDEBOEW ABEW
,
which the
Editor & Publisher
reported in 1943 as the accepted abbreviation of
Economic Intelligence Division of the Enemy Branch of the Office of Economic Warfare Analysis of the Board of Economic Warfare
.
1
How many such monstrosities were set afloat during the uproar no one will ever know, for many of them, like the pews at the public teat that they designated, had their names changed frequently. On April 7, 1943, the Hon. Earl C. Michener, a statisticsminded congressman from Michigan, filled nearly two columns of the
Congressional Record
with the names and their abbreviations of eighty-five high calibre lancets for bleeding taxpayers, ranging from the
Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA)
to the
War Shipping Administration (WSA)
.
2
Twelve days later the Hon. Walter E. Brehm, of Ohio, produced evidence
3
that the number had grown to ninety-two, and even while his list was being printed more were coming off the White House assembly line.
4
These, remember, were only major agencies, and the longest abbreviations recorded had only five letters,
e.g., OSFCW (Office of Solid Fuels Coördinator for War
), and
PWRCB (President’s War Relief Control Board)
. No wonder the newspapers and press associations began dropping the periods, and making all other possible condensations.
5
Thus the
W.A.A.C
. of 1942 became the
W.A.C
. of 1943
6
and then the
WAC
or
Wac
. So early as 1939, in fact, the slaughter of periods had begun, and when J. S. Pope, managing editor of the Atlanta
Journal
, polled his fellow-editors on the subject in that year he found that the majority of them were in favor of it.
7
The New Deal saviors
of humanity had barely got started by then, but there were plenty of other troublesome abbreviations, and the editors advocated taking the periods out of all of them,
e.g., CIO, TVA, CCC, GOP
and even
AFL
. “The
YMCA
informs us,” wrote Lindsey Hoben of the Milwaukee
Journal
, “that it often drops the period nowadays and sees no possible objection to it. Neither
DAR
nor
WCTU
has protested our style.”
1
Meanwhile, the habit of making more or less pronounceable words of the new abbreviations, examples of which were provided by the Russian loan
Ogpu
2
and the German
Nazi
and
Gestapo
, also began to spread. The English had already made a beginning in World War I with
Anzac
for
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
and
Dora
for
Defense of the Realm Act;
in World War II they followed with
Mew
for
Ministry of Economic Warfare, Waaf
for a member of the
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Service; Wren
for a member of the
Women’s Royal Naval Service
, and many another. The last-named, in fact, actually became official, and one of the ranks in the force, by the end of the war, was that of
Leading Wren
.
3
1
The Declaration of Independence: the Evolution of the Text, by Julian P. Boyd; Princeton, 1945, pp. 19–21.
2
The English Restoration took place in 1660; George II ascended the throne in 1727.
3
Franklin’s Vocabulary, by Lois Margaret MacLaurin; Garden City (N.Y.), 1929, p. 44. In this same letter Franklin denounced also the “fancy” that had lately “induced some Printers to use the short round
s
instead of the long one.” The long
s
died hard. In Vol. I of the
Monthly Magazine and American Review
for 1800, Jan.-June, the longs and the shorts were still fighting it out.
4
Private communication, Oct. 28, 1945.
5
In its Sept. issue, p. 114, it put
dr
. before the name of Franklin himself, dead only a year! See AL4, pp. 413–14, for the use of
baron, colonel
, etc., before proper names by the Cambridge History of English Literature. Mr. Theodore E. Norton, librarian of Lafayette College, calls my attention to the fact that this is standard practise in preparing American library cards.
1
But Abraham Lincoln, in a letter written during the early part of the Winter of 1864–5, was still using small letters for the names of the days of the week, though he wrote
President
.
2
That is, in caps and small caps. This custom survives on the editorial pages of the New York
Times
, the Philadelphia
Bulletin
, the Minneapolis
Journal
and various other old-fashioned newspapers. I am indebted here to Messrs. Carl B. Costello, of Duluth, Minn.; Douglas McPherson, of Philadelphia, and Theodore W. Bozarth, of Mount Holly, N. J.
3
Supplement I, pp. 618–26.
4
I am indebted here to Mr. R. E. Swartwout, of Cambridge.
5
This leads to occasional uncouthness,
e.g., St. James’s-street, Gray’s Inn-rd. and Red Lion-square
. I am indebted here to Mr. Leslie Charteris, of Weybridge.
1
Capital
M
, by Robert C. Morrow, April 7, p. 68.
2
Matthew XXVI, 26–28. The text quoted is that of the Douay Bible.
3
In French, as the Dictionary notes (seventh edition, 1933, p. 84), the order is
5 Juin 1903
and in German
5 Juni 1903
. It will be noted that no comma appears after the name of the month.
4
I turn, for example, to the London
Times
, Aug. 12, 1946, and find
August 12 1946
(no comma after
12
) in the flagstaff of the paper,
Aug. 12, 1944
in an In Memoriam notice,
September 14, 1946
in a legal notice,
Aug. 11
(no year) in the date-lines of many news dispatches, and
July 13, 1946
in a wedding announcement, though
31st August, 1946
appears in another legal notice.
5
New Yorker
, Sept. 16, 1944, p. 11;
American Notes & Queries
, June, 1946, p. 40.
6
I am told by a correspondent that when Rear Admiral Samuel McGowan, ret. (1870–1934), formerly paymaster-general of the Navy, became chief highway commissioner of his native South Carolina he ordered the use of
8 October, 1926
by his subordinates. But they went back to the usual American order after he left office.
7
Revised edition, Jan., 1945, p. 139.
8
Style Manual of the Department of State; Washington, 1937, p. 215. For discussions of the War Department order see
The Pleasures of Publishing
(a weekly press-sheet published by the Columbia University Press), July 15 and July 29, 1946.
1
Authors’ & Printers’ Dictionary, seventh edition; London, 1933, p. 370.
2
AL4, p. 502, n. 4.
3
New York, 1939.
4
Reginald Skelton, in Modern English Punctuation; London, 1933, p. 65, says that
tomorrow
is also “in regular use” in England. The Authors’ & Printers’ Dictionary, however, still ordains
to-morrow
, and likewise
to-day
.
1
Some of the inevitable inconsistencies in Miss Ball’s scheme are pointed out by Robert J. Menner in Compounding,
American Speech
, Dec., 1939, pp. 300–02.
2
Unhyphenated American,
Nation
, Sept. 5, 1942, pp. 194–95.
3
I add
sweetpotato
from the
Congressional Record
, April 2, 1946, p. 3050.
4
The inconsistencies in Webster 1934 are reviewed by Miss Ball, pp. 9–11, and also in Note on Websterian Orthography,
Prairie Schooner
, Summer, 1946, p. 152. See also Hyphenation of Compound Words, by Arthur G. Kennedy,
Words
, March, 1938, pp. 36–38. H. W. Fowler’s ideas on the subject, first set forth in
S.P.E. Tract No. VI
, 1921, pp. 3–13, are to be found in his Modern English Usage; Oxford, 1926, pp. 243–48. A discussion of the differences between English and American printers’ practises in the division of words at the ends of lines is in Word Division, by Kenneth Sisam,
S.P.E. Tract No. XXXIII
, 1929, pp. 441–42.
5
It survives, however, in the names of many colleges named after saints,
e.g., St. Mary’s
, Winona, Minn., though it may be dropped when it would be inconvenient,
e.g., St. Francis
, Brooklyn, and
St. Mary-of-the-Woods
, Indiana. A correspondent of
American Speech
(April, 1937, p. 121) calls attention to the fact that when the sex of the students is indicated in a college name the singular
woman’s
is commonly used for a college for females and the plural
men’s
for one for males. This, of course, is because
man’s
would sound incongruous. But why not
women’s?
6
This practise is discussed by Steven T. Byington in Certain Fashions in Commas and Apostrophes,
American Speech
, Feb., 1945, pp. 22–27, and also the habit, common among newspaper headline writers, of printing a series of nouns without any
and
at all,
e.g
., Committee Hears Protests of Millionaire, Educator, Philanthropist.
1
Modern English Punctuation, by Reginald Skelton; London, 1933, pp. 41–47. Topics of the Times, New York
Times
, July 13, 1942.
2
p. 121.
3
p. 203.
4
The
Century’s
Printer on the
Century
Type,
Century
, Dec., 1895, pp. 794–96.
5
Still the English term for what we call
quotation marks
or
quotes
.
6
The Text-quote, by Ernest Boll,
American Notes & Queries
, June, 1941, p. 36.
1
Style Manual, revised edition, Jan., 1945, pp. 21 and 145.
2
Many papers, and perhaps most, have no italic linotype matrices. Instead they use black-face.
3
The reader interested in the history of English punctuation will find nourishment to his taste in Historical Backgrounds of Elizabethan and Jacobean Punctuation Theory, by Walter J. Ong, S. J.,
Publications of the Modern Language Association
, June, 1944, pp. 349–60; The Punctuation of Shakespeare’s Printers, by Raymond Macdonald Alden, the same, Sept., 1924, pp. 557–80, and Shakespeare’s Punctuation, by P. Alexander,
Proceedings of the British Academy
, Vol. XXXI, 1945. So far as I know, there is no history of American punctuation. Down to a century ago it was marked by a heavy overuse of commas, now happily abandoned. For the present practise in series see The Serial Comma Before
and
and
or
, by R. J. McCutcheon,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 250–54.
1
The varying practise of American magazine and newspaper was reviewed by Mamie Meredith in The Plural of
Bus, American Speech
, Aug., 1930, pp. 487–90. See also
Buses
or
Busses
, a powerful argument for the latter, by C. W. L. Johnson, New York
Herald Tribune
, editorial page, Dec. 6, 1940.
2
Attorney-Generals
, Jan., 1939.
3
The Irregularities of English,
S.P.E. Tract No. XLVIII
, 1937, p. 287.
4
The Plural of Nouns Ending in
-th
, by C. T. Onions,
S.P.E. Tract No. LXI
, 1943, pp. 19–28.
5
Those Sporting Plurals; Washington, March, 1939. See also Predators Killing Off Game, by Ed Tyng, New York
Sun
, Jan. 25, 1946, in which both
fox
and
foxes
appear. Mr. Tyng, on inquiry, informed me (private communication, Jan. 30, 1946) that it is “increasingly common usage among anglers and hunters” to use the singular of
fox
and
skunk
in the plural, “as well as
deer, quail
and
grouse
.” He said, however, that the singulars of
bear, rabbit, pheasant
and
squirrel
were not so used. He went on: “Fishermen use
trout, bass, perch, smelt, pickerel, pike, bluefish, shad
, etc., whether referring to one or many.
Muskellunge
(the name is spelled four or more ways) is used as both singular and plural, but the diminutive,
muskie
or
musky
, always becomes
muskies
in the plural. An angler never reports a catch of
eel
or
flounder;
it is always
eels
and
flounders
.” In a report of George N. Dale, a high dignitary of the Newspaper Publishers Association,
Editor & Publisher
, Jan. 12, 1946, p. 8, I find “all mechanical
craft
” used twice. The use of
license, molasses
, etc., as plurals will be discussed in Chapter IX, Section 4.
1
Revised edition, March, 1933, pp. 55–61.
2
Style Manual, revised edition, Jan., 1945, p. 93.
3
Current Abbreviations; New York, 1945.
4
A List of Abbreviations Commonly Used in the U.S.S.R., compiled by George Z. Patrick; Berkeley (Calif.), 1937. This ran to 124 pp.
5
A Dictionary of Abbreviations, With Especial Attention to War-Time Abbreviations, by Eric Partridge, “with the able assistance of several other victims”; London, 1942.
1
EIDEBOEW ABEW
, Aug. 7, 1943.
2
pp. A1805–06.
3
Congressional Record
, April 19, 1943.
4
When the United Nations organization was set up it began to add to the number, and by Oct. 21, 1946 its
Weekly Bulletin
was constrained to print a glossary. It included
ECITO (European Central Inland Transport Organization), PICAO (Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization), UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration)
and
WHO (World Health Organization)
. The end, of course, is by no means yet.
5
William Hickey, the Walter Winchell of England, began reducing
U.S.A
. to
USA
in 1936, and his paper, the London
Daily Express
, on Aug. 29 of that year, announced that it would follow him. “We’ve dropped full-points in USA,” it said, “because there’s just no need for them; they’re lumber in the way of a taut, streamlined style.”
6
This change was made by the War Department when the WAAC became an actual part of the Army, the word
Auxiliary
being dropped.
7
Shop Talk at Thirty, by Arthur Robb,
Editor & Publisher
, April 22, 1939, p. 84. On March 29, 1947, in the same, p. 68, Robb reported that that majority had become almost unanimity.
1
In its issue for May, 1933, p. 83, the
Delta Kappa Epsilon Quarterly
had been constrained to explain “for the benefit of recent initiates (and of some older dogs who have difficulty in learning new tricks)” that its name was made up of three Greek letters, and that when it was “written in English … there should be no periods after the letters.”
2
Defined as
Unified State Political Department
in a List of Abbreviations Commonly Used in the U.S.S.R., hitherto cited.
3
Bits of Words, London
Times Literary Supplement
, Jan. 30, 1943.
