Usage guides and usage problems
The English tradition of the usage guide, best known from Henry Fowler's Modern English Usage or Lynne Truss's Eats Shoots and Leaves, goes back to 1770, when Robert Baker published Reflections on the English Language, In the Nature of Vaugelas’s Reflections on the French. There are many similarities between usage problems dealt with in the earliest usage guides and those published today, so these usage problems often have an interesting history. Here, different usage problems will be discussed in view of their history as well as in relation to other points that are interesting to discuss.
