Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Foreword vii
4. Introduction 1
5. Part I. Pragmatics and prescriptivism
6. Researching understatement in the history of English 10
7. The rise and fall of sentence-internal capitalization in English 33
8. Gender, genre, and prescriptivism 60
9. Part II. Political, legal and medical text types
10. A manipulative technique in a congressional debate 86
11. Is legal discourse really “outside the ravages of time”? 101
12. Duties, offices, and conduct 129
13. Part III. The language of late modern letters
14. Changing styles of letter-writing? 154
15. “No criticism or remarks & pray burn it as fast as you read it” 180
16. Filled-in petition forms and hand-drafted petitions to the Foundling Hospital 198
17. “Quhen I am begun to write I really knou not what to say” 225
18. Index 251