A Dictionary of Cont..

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VII1 PREFACE
many helpful comments, Jess Stein and
Leonore C. Hauck for the contributions
they made in editing this work, and Joseph
M. Bernstein for his thoughtful proofreading.
Throughout the book the authors have
tried to present the facts about current
usage fairly and accurately. They are aware
that there is more than one kind of English.
As children, living in the north of England,
they spoke a dialect that was in many ways
nearer to the English of Chaucer than to
that of the New York Times. They have,
therefore, a personal affection for forms
that are older than our current Iiterary
forms. As adults they have both had occasion,
over many years, to read a great deal
of manuscript English, the unedited writings
of college students and adults working
in various professions. They are therefore
familiar with current tendencies in English.
They hope that this wide acquaintance with
the language has kept them from giving too
much weight to their personal preferences.
But they have a personal bias, and this
should be stated clearly. The authors are
prejudiced in favor of literary forms. They
prefer the forms used by the great writers
of English to forms found only in technical
journals. This means that if they list a nonliterary
form as acceptable there is conclusive
evidence that it is accepted. But
they may have listed some forms as questionable
that are standard in some areas or
professions. The reader must decide these
things for himself. To anyone who has a
serious interest in the language that he
hears and uses, the authors would like to
say, in the words of Socrates, “Agree with
me if I seem to speak the truth.”