How to Speak and Write Correctly | Page 2

the words in the dictionary or could use them did he live to be the age of Methuselah, and
there is no necessity for using them.
There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the large dictionaries, but
the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice for all your wants. Of course you may
think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be
ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your
pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade.
You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better,
however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has
stood the test of time, and old friends are always good friends.
To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the
same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use
simple words.
To go back to the number necessary for all purposes of conversation correspondence and
writing, 2,000, we find that a great many people who pass in society as being polished,
refined and educated use less, for they know less. The greatest scholar alive hasn't more
than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half
the number.
In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there
is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are
obsolete or meaningless today.
Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tongue correctly. It only
requires a little pains, a little care, a little study to enable one to do so, and the
recompense is great.
Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and
use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the
ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his
infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language,
make his very presence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company.
The proper grammatical formation of the English language, so that one may acquit
himself as a correct conversationalist in the best society or be able to write and express
his thoughts and ideas upon paper in the right manner, may be acquired in a few lessons.
It is the purpose of this book, as briefly and concisely as possible, to direct the reader
along a straight course, pointing out the mistakes he must avoid and giving him such
assistance as will enable him to reach the goal of a correct knowledge of the English
language. It is not a Grammar in any sense, but a guide, a silent signal-post pointing the
way in the right direction.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL
All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes
are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb,
Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all
the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person,
place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are
two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common Nouns are names which belong in
common to a race or class, as man, city. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of
a race or class as John, Philadelphia. In the former case man is a name which belongs in
common to the whole race of mankind, and city is also a name which is common to all
large centres of population, but John signifies a particular individual of the race, while
Philadelphia denotes a particular one from among the cities of the world.
Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that relation existing
between the speaker, those addressed and the subject under consideration, whether by
discourse or correspondence. The Persons are First, Second and Third and they represent
respectively the speaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or under
consideration.
Number is the distinction of one from more than one. There are two numbers, singular
and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or more. The plural is generally
formed from the singular by the addition of s or es.
Gender has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, but while there are only
two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine, feminine,