pedantry

pedantry

Fowler (1926) observed that the term ‘is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, and someone else's ignorance’. He referred to articles in his book and left the reader to decide where on the scale of pedantry his work belonged. Fowler was rarely pedantic but his readers often were, and read into his statements things that Fowler never intended. Some examples of pedantic attitudes to usage will be found in the following entries (not an exhaustive list, and the reader may be able to add others): also 2 (position of also), barbarisms (objections to mixed forms such as television), circumstance (objection to under the circumstances), curriculum (plural form curricula vitarum), data (data as invariable plural), ex- (Fowler's objection to the type ex-Prime Minister), fewer, less (the type 12 items or fewer), fraction (a fraction not necessarily a small quantity), hoi polloi (use of the hoi polloi), only (position of only), other ² (use of other than for otherwise than), per capita (use of per caput), target (doubled targets are easier, not harder, to hit).