Modern American Usage

Modern American Usage may refer simply to modern usage (that is, contemporary usage or usage considered over recent decades or the modern era) of American English, or to the title of any of several well-known or less well-known books on the subject of American English, including:

• Follett's Modern American Usage (1966), a guide for careful writers of American English
• Garner's Modern American Usage (2nd edition 2003), a guide for careful writers of American English originally published (1st edition 1998) as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage of which an abridged form was published in 2000 by the Oxford University Press with the title The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style.
• A Dictionary Modern American Usage by H. W. Horwill, published in 1935 by the Oxford University Press, and written chiefly as a comparison of American with British English.

Of Horwill's book, copies of which are still sometimes found, the following can be noted. First, a copy of it might easily be taken for something like either Follett's or Garner's work, not least because only the last three words of the title were used on the hard cover — on the spine. Second, Horwill said at the very beginning of his preface that his purpose was not to teach Americans how to write or speak American; rather, it was firstly to help English people to understand American English, and secondly to help Americans understand how much their language had evolved to differ from other forms, particularly British English. His book was therefore very different from the other, more recent, works commonly known by the same title.

References

• Modern American Usage by Wilson Follett (1966)
• Modern American Usage, edited by Bryan A. Garner (1998, 2003)
• A Dictionary Modern American Usage by H.W. Horwill, (1935, OUP)

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