The King's English

The plan of the book was dictated by the following considerations.

It is notorious that English writers seldom look into a grammar or

composition book; the reading of grammars is repellent because,

being bound to be exhaustive on a greater or less scale, they must

give much space to the obvious or the unnecessary; and composition

books are often useless because they enforce their warnings only by

fabricated blunders against which every trio feels himself quite safe.

The principle adopted here has therefore been 

(1) to pass by all rules, of whatever absolute importance, that are shown by observation to be seldom or never broken; and 

(2) to illustrate by living examples,

with the name of a reputable authority attached to each, all blunders that observation shows to be common. 

The reader, however, who is led to suspect that the only method followed has been the rejection of method will find, it is hoped, a practical security against inconvenience in the very full Index.