H.W. Fowler Style

E.g., “The sentence that I write here, which may or may not include both kinds of clauses, should conform to this rule." twitter.com/HenryWFowler/s…

@ThatOneEyedSnow @nytimes Not the headline. Look at my screenshot.

@HenryWFowler @nytimes Can't get past the paywall—are we referring to the headline? I always thought collective nouns took a plural verb. "Deer are destroying my garden."

The failure to correctly pair subjects with verbs continues at the ⁦@nytimes⁩. nytimes.com/2026/03/15/us/…

@jeremymarchant In AmE we would say "swath," but yes.

This has become so prevalent it is almost de rigeur for a wide swathe of hacks and other would-be communicators.

An epidemic of simple, obvious subject-verb disagreements this week, this one in ⁦@NYTObits⁩. nytimes.com/2026/03/17/boo…

This one is even worse, @washingtonpost. Did your recent layoffs include all copy editors? washingtonpost.com/health/2026/03…

A subject-verb disagreement, @washingtonpost. The “sample,” not the parenthetical “scrapings,” is the subject. washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/03…

@JosephBottum @nytimes Probably so.

@HenryWFowler @nytimes At a guess, the description is wrong anyway. I doubt that each new cut was larger than the previous cut. What the author probably meant was that the total of the cut portion of the budget kept increasing as each new cut, large or small, was added.

A redundancy, ⁦@nytimes⁩. Try “increasingly large” or “ever larger.” nytimes.com/2026/03/14/bus…

@ThatOneEyedSnow @nytimes It’s because the access is indirect, through an academic database, not in this case directly from the magazine itself.

@HenryWFowler @nytimes Strange. My online copy is available at the start of each month before I get my print copy. Maybe ask Nurse Ratched to look into that.

No doubt you mean “testified to his taking a shot,” ⁦@nytimes⁩. nytimes.com/2026/03/12/nyr…

@ThatOneEyedSnow @nytimes Available through our library online, but running about a month behind, I think.

@HenryWFowler @nytimes While we're at it, do they subscribe to The New Criterion at the place where you're institutionalized? My guess is it would be slim pickings for you, but perhaps more of a challenge.

@ThatOneEyedSnow @nytimes It requires becoming institutionalized.

@HenryWFowler @nytimes I always wanted one of those. 😅

@ThatOneEyedSnow @nytimes Not to worry, I have institutional subscription access to both. And the WaPost, Atlantic, NYRB . . .

@HenryWFowler @nytimes They should at least give you a free subscription! Them [sic] and the Wall Street Journal. 🤠

@rhepstein1 Wasn’t that somewhere on Lydia the Tattooed Lady?

@HenryWFowler Remember the reek of the Hesperus?

A common error, probably owing to a previous error of pronouncing "wreak" with a short E rather than a long one. If you hear "wreck havoc," that's how you'll wind up spelling it.

@HenryWFowler I don't think this jives with what we were taught.

@BruvverEccles @vid_hardt One word for three —efficient!

@HenryWFowler @vid_hardt Final letter written by...

An all-time favorite trope: explaining that specific events of a human's life happened before death. Deleted many of these in my editing work.

A certain critic—for such men, I regret to say, do exist—made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled this man by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

idk what's sillier, suggesting that Cormac McCarthy was making an unintentional grammatical error or spelling "Blood Meridian" wrong