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79-521: Sir Ernest Arthur Gowers ( / ˈ ɡ aʊ . ər z / ; 2 June 1880 – 16 April 1966) was a British civil servant and author who is best remembered for his book Plain Words , first published in 1948, and his revision of Fowler 's classic Modern English Usage . Before making his name as an author, he had a long career in the Civil Service , which he entered in 1903. His final full-time appointment

158-469: A biographical sketch of Gowers, his great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers comments that this potentially gave him direct responsibility for governing seven million people, though at the time he wrote of himself as "but a transient and embarrassed phantom flitting across the stage of history." The Times wrote of Gowers, "In this post he showed his full powers as an administrator, and indeed as a leader. Energetic, forceful, always cheerful, with an unfailing eye for

237-677: A body of people already overburdened. When revising the text in preparation for The Complete Plain Words , Gowers abandoned the joke, and rewrote the second sentence as, "I suspect that this project may be received by many of them without any marked enthusiasm or gratitude." A substantive objection by Vallins to "the cult of 'plain English'" was his view that verbose phrases lose important nuances when reduced to plain words. He gave as an example "evacuated to alternative accommodation", which in his opinion has overtones that Gowers's "taken to other houses" lacks. The Treasury invited Gowers to build on

316-716: A civil servant it would have automatically been Crown copyright , but as he had not begun it until after his retirement he owned the rights. The Treasury offered a flat fee of £500, but he successfully held out for a royalty on every copy sold. The government publisher, His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO), issued the booklet for sale in April 1948. It was priced at two shillings (10 pence in British decimal currency); between April and Christmas 1948 it sold more than 150,000 copies and had to be reprinted seven times. Reviewers responded favourably. The Times Literary Supplement praised

395-641: A frequent feature of loose writing and all the editions of the Plain Words books retain and expand Gowers's advice, whereas within three years of writing The ABC , Gowers noted in The Complete Plain Words that "backlog" was rapidly and usefully establishing itself in British usage. Neither the Treasury nor HMSO expected the second book to rival the popularity of its predecessor, but it sold nearly 80,000 copies in its first year. Gowers

474-724: A house in Sussex in the 1930s and lived there permanently after the war, writing books and managing a small farm. He became chairman of the board of the hospital where his father had worked, the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases (now the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery ), Queen Square, London, and was on the board of Le Court Cheshire Home near Petersfield . Gowers died in April 1966, at King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, Sussex, age 85, nine months after his revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage

553-487: A letter" does not. Gowers and his successors revised their advice as usage changed over the years. Two consecutive entries in The ABC illustrate how some comments have become dated and others have not: Gowers warned in 1951 that the word "backlog" meaning "arrears" would be unintelligible to British readers, and in the next entry he advised that the construction "on a   ... basis" should be avoided. The latter remains

632-486: A new style of official writing, friendly in tone and easy to understand. His views came to the notice of the head of the civil service, Sir Edward Bridges , permanent secretary to the Treasury . After Gowers retired from the civil service at the end of the war, Bridges asked him to write a short pamphlet on good writing, for the benefit of the new generation of officials. Bridges called on his senior colleagues throughout

711-455: A poet, urged the use of straightforward writing. Reviewing Plain Words in 1948, The Manchester Guardian quoted the French revolutionary Martial Herman writing in 1794: The nonsensical jargon of the old Ministries must be replaced by a simple style, clear and yet concise, free from expressions of servility, from obsequious formulae, stand-offishness, pedantry, or any suggestion that there

790-531: A report by management consultant group Collinson Grant was made public by Andrew Mackinlay . The report severely criticised the FCO's management structure, noting: The Foreign Office commissioned the report to highlight areas which would help it achieve its pledge to reduce spending by £87 million over three years. In response to the report being made public, the Foreign Office stated it had already implemented

869-482: A review of the FCO's strategic priorities. One of the key messages of these discussions was the conclusion that the existing framework of ten international strategic priorities, dating from 2003, was no longer appropriate. Although the framework had been useful in helping the FCO plan its work and allocate its resources, there was agreement that it needed a new framework to drive its work forward. The new strategic framework consists of three core elements: In August 2005,

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948-532: A senior civil servant, was among those who wished to see officialese replaced by normal English. In 1929 he remarked in a speech about the civil service, "It is said   ... that we revel in jargon and obscurity". During the Second World War, with the role of government greatly expanded, official communications proliferated, and in Gowers's view were full of "mistiness and grandiloquence". He called for

1027-581: A small committee of senior officials formed to help him and comment on his proposals. The colleague on whom Gowers most relied was Llewelyn Wyn Griffith of the Inland Revenue, whose contribution Gowers acknowledged in the prefaces to Plain Words and its two successors. The result of Gowers's work was Plain Words , a 94-page booklet. It was judged successful by the civil service, and the Treasury considered that it should be made publicly available. Had Gowers written it as part of his duties while still

1106-521: A version less sure of the nature of its readership or the mood of the nation, is an honourable and certainly a useful guide. The Fraser edition was reprinted in hardback three times between 1973 and 1983. Penguin published a paperback version in the UK in 1973, and in the US in 1975. The third edition was commissioned not by the Treasury but by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, to mark its bicentenary. The revision

1185-595: Is a Digression on Legal English followed by chapters on The Elements, Correctness, Avoiding the Superfluous Word, Choosing the Familiar Word, Choosing the Precise Word, The Handling of Words, and Punctuation. The 1954 text was reprinted seven times during Gowers's lifetime, and he made a number of amendments in the various impressions. Changing times in the 1960s meant that a substantial revision

1264-412: Is an authority superior to that of reason, or of the order established by law. There must be no conventional phrases, no waste of words. The British civil service of the 19th and early 20th centuries had a reputation for pomposity and long-windedness in its written communications. In Little Dorrit in the mid-1850s, Charles Dickens caricatured officialdom as the "Circumlocution Office", where for even

1343-436: Is equally acute, diverting and instructive". In The Times , Dennis Potter said that the book remained "the happiest thing to come out of the Treasury". He praised Fraser for replacing Gowers's dated examples of officialese with modern specimens and updating the text to reflect current trends, but concluded: The core of the book remains Gowers, but I do not think Fraser, for all his desire to be faithful, has been able to keep

1422-422: Is great fun to read". Occasionally Gowers's humour misled literal-minded reviewers. The Daily Mail , Harold Nicolson and the grammarian G H Vallins objected to the conspicuously un-plain words of Gowers's opening sentences: The purpose of this book is to help officials in their use of written English. To some of them this may seem a work of supererogation, calculated only to place an unnecessary burden on

1501-509: Is in blue cloth, with dust-jacket, and has 298 pages. A paperback version was issued by Penguin Books in 1987, and an American hardback edition was published in 1988 by Godine Publishing , Boston. The last direct link between Plain Words and the public service was broken in 1996, when HMSO was dismembered under governmental privatisation policy. The 2014 edition of the book was published by Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Books . It

1580-660: Is responsible for representing and promoting British interests worldwide. The head of the FCDO is the secretary of state for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs , commonly abbreviated to "foreign secretary". This is regarded as one of the four most prestigious positions in the Cabinet – the Great Offices of State – alongside those of Prime Minister , Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary . David Lammy

1659-727: Is the ministry of foreign affairs and a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom . The office was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID). The FCO was itself created in 1968 by the merger of the Foreign Office (FO) and the Commonwealth Office . The department in its various forms

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1738-477: Is to support efforts to achieve a two-state solution . Funding a particular project for a limited period of time does not mean that we endorse every single action or public comment made by an NGO or by its employees." In September 2012, the FCO and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs signed a Memorandum of Understanding on diplomatic cooperation, which promotes the co-location of embassies,

1817-656: The Board of Inland Revenue . In 1930 Gowers was appointed chair of the newly established Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission, set up under the Coal Mines Act of 1930 , in an attempt to improve the efficiency of British coal mines, but deficiencies in the Act soon became evident. The Times commented, "Sir Ernest Gowers and his colleagues struggled manfully with their difficulties, but Parliament had inadvertently tied their hands behind their backs." A new and more powerful body,

1896-648: The Colonial Office , from 1966 to 1968 by the Commonwealth Office , from 1968 to 2020 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office , and since 2020 by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (this did not include protectorates , which fell under the purview of the Foreign Office , or to British India , which had been administered by the East India Company until 1858, and thereafter by

1975-775: The First World War , the Arab Bureau was set up within the British Foreign Office as a section of the Cairo Intelligence Department . During the early Cold War an important department was the Information Research Department (IRD) which was used to create propaganda against socialist and anti-colonial movements. The Foreign Office hired its first woman diplomat, Monica Milne , in 1946. The FCO

2054-682: The India Office in September 1904, and from March 1907 to October 1911, he was private secretary to successive Parliamentary Under-Secretaries for India , most notably Edwin Montagu . In October 1911 he was promoted to HM Treasury as private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer , David Lloyd George , at a time when Lloyd George was introducing his controversial National Insurance Bill. In November 1912 Lloyd George appointed him to

2133-475: The India Office ). This arrangement has been subject to criticism in the UK and in the overseas territories. For example, the chief minister of Anguilla , Victor Banks , said: "We are not foreign; neither are we members of the Commonwealth , so we should have a different interface with the UK that is based on mutual respect". There have been numerous suggestions on ways to improve the relationship between

2212-642: The National Health Insurance Commission , as one of a team of promising young civil servants (including John Anderson , Warren Fisher , Arthur Salter , and Claud Schuster ) nicknamed the "Loan Collection" as they had been hand-picked from across the civil service. Gowers wrote later, "This gigantic task of bringing the National Health and Unemployment Insurance Acts into operation taught the Service what it could do, and

2291-556: The Natural History Museum , with Harold Scott and Edward "Teddy" Evans as his deputies. The prime minister, Winston Churchill , told Gowers, "If communication with the Government becomes very difficult or impossible, it may be necessary for you to act on behalf of the Government   … without consultation with ministers." Churchill promised that in such an event Gowers would have the Government's backing. In

2370-584: The Royal Institute of British Architects , and was elected president of the English Association (1956–57). Ernest Gowers and Constance (Kit) had three children and six grandchildren, for whom they always offered an open house in the school holidays. When Kit died in 1952, one of their daughters, the oboist Peggy Shiffner, gave up her career and moved in to look after him, also working as a volunteer at Le Court. The composer Patrick Gowers

2449-676: The Senate of Northern Ireland , and a Deputy-Lieutenant for Co. Antrim). They had two daughters and one son. Gowers's elder brother, William, went to Africa, joined the colonial civil service and rose to become Governor of Uganda (1925–32) and Senior Crown Agent for the Colonies (1932–38). In 1902 Gowers graduated from Cambridge with a First in the Classical Tripos and attended Wren's , a civil service crammer in London, to study for

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2528-402: The 19th century, it was not infrequent for the Foreign Office to approach The Times newspaper and ask for continental intelligence, which was often superior to that conveyed by official sources. Examples of journalists who specialized in foreign affairs and were well connected to politicians included: Henry Southern , Valentine Chirol , Harold Nicolson, and Robert Bruce Lockhart . During

2607-546: The Coal Commission, was set up in 1938, with Gowers as chairman. In July 1942 all unmined coal in Britain ceased to be the property of the colliery owners and was vested in the Coal Commission. Throughout the 1930s Gowers and his colleagues had also been involved in preparing for possible war, and invasion. From 1935 onwards he combined his frustrating work with the coal industry with civil defence planning, attached to

2686-639: The Colonial Office in 1925. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office held responsibility for international development issues between 1970 and 1974, and again between 1979 and 1997. The National Archives website contains a government timeline to show the departments responsible for foreign affairs from 1945. From 1997, international development became the responsibility of the separate Department for International Development . When David Miliband took over as Foreign Secretary in June 2007, he set in hand

2765-594: The Department for the Co-ordination of Defence. John Anderson was given control of civil defence planning in 1938 and set up a network of civil defence regions. Euan Wallace MP was appointed head of London Region, but ill-health forced him to retire in 1940. Gowers, his deputy, became Senior Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence in London, running civil defence through the Blitz from a concrete bunker underneath

2844-706: The FCDO are scrutinised by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee . According to the FCDO website, the department's key responsibilities (as of 2020) are as follows: In addition to the above responsibilities, the FCDO is responsible for the British Overseas Territories , which had previously been administered from 1782 to 1801 by the Home Office , from 1801 to 1854 by the War and Colonial Office , from 1854 to 1966 by

2923-553: The blessing of a same-sex marriage . In 2012, the Foreign Office was criticised by Gerald Steinberg of the Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor , saying that the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development provided more than £500,000 in funding to Palestinian NGOs which he said "promote political attacks on Israel". In response, a spokesman for the Foreign Office said "we are very careful about who and what we fund. The objective of our funding

3002-648: The book and engaged in a little mock-officialese of its own: "It deserves to be a 'best seller' (or perhaps we should say that in all the circumstances it may reasonably be anticipated that it will be found to evoke a relatively considerable demand on the part of the general public)." The Times devoted a leader to the work, and concluded, "for all its cool urbanity Plain Words is written with missionary zeal". The Manchester Guardian considered that by commissioning Plain Words from Gowers "the Treasury has put us all in its debt." The Economist commented, "The Stationery Office must have enjoyed publishing this book. It

3081-530: The bureaucracy in the Ministry for Town and Country Planning and his three-year contract was not renewed. He was told that he was too old. This did not prevent his being invited to chair a series of committees of inquiry on Women in the Foreign Service (1945); Closing Hours of Shops (1946); Houses of Outstanding Historic or Architectural Interest (1948); and Foot-and-mouth Disease (1952). In 1949 Gowers

3160-504: The chapter were on "vogue words" and "modish writing". Fraser noted that though Gowers had said approvingly in 1954 that the use of the subjunctive was dying out, it was now, under the influence of American writing, making an unwelcome reappearance in English usage. Reviewing the new edition in The Times Literary Supplement , David Hunt commented of Fraser, "his wit, perhaps a little drier and more Scottish,

3239-516: The civil service to cooperate; some had already made efforts in the same cause, including the Inland Revenue , whose advice to staff included "one golden rule to bear in mind always: that we should try to put ourselves in the position of our correspondent, to imagine his feelings as he writes his letters, and to gauge his reaction as he receives ours." Government departments sent Gowers many examples of officialese so extreme as to be amusing;

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3318-508: The commission converted him from vague support of capital punishment to strong opposition. As a result, he wrote A Life for a Life? The Problem of Capital Punishment (1956), of which H L A Hart wrote, "Certainly the publication of this report in England introduced altogether new standards of clarity and relevance into discussions of a subject which had too often been obscured by ignorance and prejudice." The political debate dragged on and it

3397-484: The control of the whole of the social and economic life of the nation during the war drove home the lesson." The members of the loan collection were deployed to other departments during the First World War. While nominally continuing to hold his post, Gowers was attached to the Foreign Office working under Charles Masterman MP at Wellington House , Britain's top-secret wartime propaganda unit. In 1917 Gowers

3476-782: The essential, he gave the impression of being master of every unexpected development and, as a result, infused confidence into all who came in contact with him." His wife became a member of the Women's Voluntary Service and ran the Gordon Services Club, a hostel for soldiers on leave in London . After the war Gowers was appointed chairman of the Harlow New Town Development Corporation, one of several new towns being built to provide housing for people displaced by wartime bombing, but he fell foul of

3555-432: The first person; Fraser had retained it, stating "...the reader may take it that 'I' means either 'Gowers agreed with by Fraser' or 'Fraser, confident that Gowers would agree with him'". With joint authors for the new edition, this could not be sustained, and the change from first person to impersonal removed some of the book's previous character. An example is in the section on punctuation, where Gowers wrote, "The author of

3634-567: The highly competitive Civil Service Examination . He also sat for the Inner Temple Bar exam, which he passed in 1906. In December 1903 he passed the Civil Service Examination, and embarked on the career that led to the claim that he "may be regarded as one of the greatest public servants of his day." Gowers entered the home civil service as an upper division clerk in the Department of Inland Revenue . He moved to

3713-708: The job done by problem . Thus a government department these days might release a disastrous consultation paper in terms of issues to do with interoperability issues, even as a Minister has personal issues that threaten to become an issue in the press, causing the Prime Minister to have a major issue with the Minister. In short, Gowers's warning went unheeded, and issue is being made to labour harder than ever. Although Fraser, Greenbaum and Whitcut remained broadly faithful to Gowers's original structure and chapter headings, with some minor changes, Rebecca Gowers reverts to

3792-463: The joint provision of consular services, and common crisis response. The project has been criticised for further diminishing the UK's influence in Europe. In 2011, the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague , announced the government's intention to open a number of new diplomatic posts in order to enhance the UK's overseas network. As such, eight new embassies and six new consulates were opened around

3871-441: The leading virtues in factual writing. Throughout his life he crusaded against the faults which have made "officialese" a term of opprobrium and in favour of simple and direct English. Robert Burchfield on Gowers and Plain Words . The resulting Plain Words , a work 94 pages long, became an instant success, not only within the civil service but internationally. It was published in April 1948 and by Christmas of that year, it

3950-502: The most urgent matter nothing could be done without "half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence." By the 1880s the term "officialese" was in use, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as, "The formal and typically verbose language considered characteristic of officials or official documents". Sir Ernest Gowers ,

4029-607: The obvious and best course would be to combine the two booklets into a single volume. This Gowers did, with help from his colleagues, as before; he made many revisions as a result of "the many correspondents from all parts of the English-speaking world who have been good enough … to send me suggestions, criticisms and specimens". An example of his revisions is in the entry on "bottleneck", of which in 1951 he had written four brief sentences warning against overuse: in 1954 he felt it necessary to write 270 words, so ubiquitous had

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4108-729: The original almost exclusively. The modernisations she introduces, such as the consideration of gender-neutral language , are incorporated into the chapters of the 1954 book. Foreign Office King Charles III [REDACTED] William, Prince of Wales [REDACTED] Charles III ( King-in-Council ) [REDACTED] Starmer ministry ( L ) Keir Starmer ( L ) Angela Rayner ( L ) ( King-in-Parliament ) [REDACTED] Charles III [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] The Lord Reed The Lord Hodge Andrew Bailey Monetary Policy Committee The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ( FCDO )

4187-608: The original text. Her practice is to retain Ernest Gowers's remarks and append updated observations in a separate note. An example is the entry on the use of the noun "issue". The original words were: This word has a very wide range of proper meanings as a noun, and should not be made to do any more work – the work, for instance of subject , topic , consideration and dispute . To which the reviser has added: Note : The workload of issue has grown enormously since Gowers wrote this, not least because it now also doubles up on

4266-573: The overseas territories and the UK. Suggestions have included setting up a dedicated department to handle relations with the overseas territories, and the absorption of the Overseas Territories Directorate (OTD) in the Cabinet Office , thus affording the overseas territories with better connections to the centre of government. The FCDO ministers are as follows, with cabinet ministers in bold: The Foreign Office

4345-836: The proprietors of the Leeds Mercury ). The family lived in Queen Anne Street, W1. Ernest followed his elder brother, William Frederick Gowers (1875–1954), to Rugby School , where he excelled academically and in sport. At Rugby, Ernest was also noted as an outstanding organist, an accomplishment that became a lifelong hobby. Both boys won scholarships to read Classics at Cambridge--(William to Trinity College, Cambridge and Ernest to Clare College, Cambridge ). Their sisters, Edith and Evelyn, mainly schooled at home, both lost their sight after developing Retinitis pigmentosa in early adult life. In 1905 Gowers married Constance Greer, daughter of Thomas Macgregor Greer (member of

4424-438: The purpose of the new book in his preface, "We must have something that can be kept on the desk and consulted on points of difficulty as they arise. Plain Words is of little use for that: it has not even an index". The new work consisted of articles, mostly brief, on points of vocabulary, grammar, construction, punctuation and style, set out in alphabetical order, beginning with "Abstract words" and ending with "Write". The former

4503-445: The remarkably cheap price of five shillings (25p). The Times Literary Supplement greeted the publication: "It may be hoped that in this more durable form the book's good influence will continue to spread: Civil Servants have not been alone in profiting from it in the past, nor should they be in the future." The book has remained in print, in its original and revised editions, ever since. Between Gowers's prologue and epilogue there

4582-438: The report's recommendations. In 2009, Gordon Brown created the position of Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) to the FCO. The first science adviser was David Clary . On 25 April 2010, the department apologised after The Sunday Telegraph obtained a "foolish" document calling for the upcoming September visit of Pope Benedict XVI to be marked by the launch of "Benedict-branded" condoms , the opening of an abortion clinic and

4661-483: The style-book of the Oxford University Press   ... says 'If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad'. I have no intention of taking hyphens seriously." In the new edition the second sentence read, "You should not take hyphens seriously". Rebecca Gowers objects that this approach "systematically depersonalise[s] the writing". The new edition, in the same format as its two predecessors,

4740-432: The success of Plain Words by producing a second volume of advice on good, clear writing. As with its predecessor, he "had many helpers to thank", including Griffith and other civil service colleagues. He also drew on the works of well-known writers on English usage, including H W Fowler , A P Herbert and Eric Partridge . The ABC of Plain Words had 160 pages, and was priced at three shillings (15p). Gowers explained

4819-516: The term become. (By the time of the 1973 revision the fad for the word had declined, and Fraser's entry is very much shorter.) The Complete Plain Words contained 226 pages, including seven pages of index. It was a hardback, in green cloth binding with dust-jacket, in HMSO's preferred size, used for the two earlier Plain Words books, 8.4in x 5.25in (21.3 cm x 13.3 cm). It was published in September 1954 at what The Manchester Guardian called

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4898-449: The urbane, untroubled, effortless grace which made the original so instantly attractive. And, to be fair, the times have made this all but impossible.   ... The Complete Plain Words in any new version cannot possibly have the same impact as Gowers first had when he reminded administrators that they could best express themselves in a clean and economical prose. But this version, which battles with later jargon and more subtle temptations,

4977-450: Was appointed Foreign Secretary on 5th July 2024 following the 2024 general election . The FCDO is managed day-to-day by a civil servant , the permanent under-secretary of state for foreign affairs , who also acts as the Head of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service . Sir Philip Barton took office as permanent under-secretary on 2 September 2020. The expenditure, administration and policy of

5056-400: Was appointed chairman of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949–53), set up by the Attlee government in an attempt to defuse the long-term political debate over capital punishment, but the terms of reference did not include provision for recommending its abolition. He was profoundly affected by the evidence presented to the commission and said later that what he learned as chairman of

5135-416: Was appointed secretary of the Conciliation and Arbitration Board for government employees. In 1919 he began a 25-year involvement with the coal industry, joining the Board of Trade as director of production in the mines department. The following year he was promoted to head the department as permanent under-secretary for mines, a position he retained throughout the Miners' Strike. In 1927 he became chairman of

5214-444: Was as Senior Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence, London Region (1940–45). After the Second World War , he was appointed chairman of numerous government inquiries, including the 1949 Royal Commission into Capital Punishment . He was also chairman of the Harlow New Town Development Corporation. Gowers was born in London, the younger son of the neurologist Sir William Gowers and his wife, Mary, (daughter of Frederick Baines, one of

5293-408: Was formed in March 1782 by combining the Southern and Northern Departments of the Secretary of State, each of which covered both foreign and domestic affairs in their parts of the Kingdom. The two departments' foreign affairs responsibilities became the Foreign Office, whilst their domestic affairs responsibilities were assigned to the Home Office. The Home Office is technically the senior. During

5372-420: Was formed on 17 October 1968, from the merger of the short-lived Commonwealth Office and the Foreign Office . The Commonwealth Office had been created only in 1966, by the merger of the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office , the Commonwealth Relations Office having been formed by the merger of the Dominions Office and the India Office in 1947—with the Dominions Office having been split from

5451-408: Was his grandson, and the mathematician Sir Timothy Gowers is his great-grandson. Plain Words All the editions until that of 2014 were published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) . The most recent is issued by an imprint of Penguin Books . The association of wordiness with bureaucracy has a long history. In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer , a prominent civil servant as well as

5530-426: Was in its eighth impression, with more than 150,000 copies sold. It was followed by the ABC of Plain Words (1951), and the two books were combined in 1954 and published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office as The Complete Plain Words . This was revised in 1973 by Sir Bruce Fraser , and then in 1986 by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut. In March 2014, a new revision, by Gowers's great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers,

5609-429: Was made not by an experienced public servant but by an academic and a lexicographer, Sidney Greenbaum , Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London and Janet Whitcut, formerly senior research editor of the Longman Dictionary . They chose to revise Fraser's 1973 version rather than starting from Gowers's original. Having two authors made it necessary to abandon Gowers's frequent use of

5688-409: Was needed if the book was to continue to fulfil its purpose. Gowers, fully occupied for a decade in making the first revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage , was unable to carry out the task; he died in 1966, a few months after the publication of the revised Fowler. Another retired senior civil servant, Bruce Fraser , was asked to revise The Complete Plain Words . The new edition, 250 pages long,

5767-737: Was nevertheless not wholly happy with it. He thought the A–Z layout had two disadvantages. The first was that it gave the wrong impression that all the topics were of equal importance; the second was that the people most in need of advice would not think to look up the relevant entry: "There is no reason why anyone addicted to abstract nouns, unconscious of any offence, should ever be prompted to read that article; nor can I think of any other title for it that would be more likely to throw it in his way." By 1954 both books were still selling well. Almost 300,000 copies of Plain Words and more than 130,000 of The ABC had been sold. The Treasury, HMSO and Gowers agreed that

5846-576: Was not until 1965 that capital punishment was effectively abolished in England. Gowers first went into print on the subject of bureaucratic English usage, in 1929. in an article entitled "Mainly About the King's English", and he continued this crusade throughout his career. After the Second World War, Sir Edward Bridges , head of the home civil service, invited him to write a pamphlet on English usage for use in civil service training courses. The books on "plain words" show his regard for brevity and precision as

5925-415: Was one of the longer entries, explaining the dangers of overuse of abstract words, and recommending concrete terms where possible. Thus, "Was this the realisation of an anticipated liability?" would be better as, "Did you expect to have to do this?" The entry on "Write" was an example of one of the short articles on particular words; it pointed out that "I wrote to you about it" needs the "to" but "I wrote you

6004-467: Was printed on lower-weight paper and in a smaller format than its predecessors. The reviser was Rebecca Gowers, Ernest's great-granddaughter, a novelist and author of a non-fiction book about a Victorian murder. She begins the new edition with a twenty-page preface that includes a biographical sketch of Ernest Gowers and a history of the revisions after his death. Unlike the three earlier revisers, Rebecca Gowers generally avoids merging her own comments with

6083-428: Was published by HMSO at £1, in hardback with black cloth binding and dust-jacket, in the same format as the first edition. Fraser preserved Gowers's structure, and added three new chapters, the most important of which was titled "Some recent trends"; it covered the increasing prevalence of informality, and the influences of America, science, technology, economics, business, and personnel management. The final sections of

6162-516: Was published by Penguin Books. In 1956, at the age of 76, Gowers accepted a commission from the Oxford University Press to undertake the first revision of H   W   Fowler 's Modern English Usage , which had been in print since 1926 with only very minor changes. It took Gowers nine years to complete the task. In 1996, Gowers' edition was succeeded by a more radical revision, edited by Robert Burchfield . Gowers bought

6241-773: Was published. Gowers was appointed CB in 1917, Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Belgium in 1918, KBE in 1926, KCB in 1928, GBE in 1945, and GCB in 1953. He was Gentleman Usher of the Purple Rod of the Order of the British Empire , 1952–60. He was a Freeman of Royal Borough of the Kingston-on-Thames . Gowers received an honorary doctorate from Manchester University , was an honorary fellow of Clare College, Cambridge , and an honorary Associate of

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