Slips of Tongue and Pen

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. This sharp, practical handbook takes aim at the most persistent traps in English usage, opening with a long, authoritative survey of common mistakes in word choice, grammar, and style. It distinguishes near-synonyms and easily confused terms with relentless care, showing how words such as convinced and persuaded, replace and displace, scarce and scarcely, and many others differ in meaning, tone, and proper use. From misused prepositions and awkward tense shifts to faulty comparisons, pronouns, plurals, and participles, the book teaches precision by explaining why certain expressions are wrong and how to make them exact. As it moves from isolated word choices to broader composition, it warns against vagueness, repetition, redundant phrasing, mixed constructions, and logical awkwardness, while advocating vivid description, emphasis, suspense, and disciplined sentence structure. The result is a forceful defense of clarity, economy, and grammatical correctness—a compact guide for writers and readers who want English prose that is exact, idiomatic, and elegant.