A SINGLE but ample purpose has determined the choice of the materials that have gone to the making of this book. This purpose has been to indicate a manner of reducing to some kind of intelligible order the tangle of opinion and of unconscious habit which is present in the minds of English speaking persons in the practical command of their native idiom. The field under observation has been the use of the native idiom not merely in writing but also in speech, and not merely at painful moments of indecision, but also when no hesitations attend the words and phrases of tongue and of pen.

That this purpose is ample appears even from so brief a statement. Perhaps it is a purpose too ample for adequate realization. Such a realization would imply a complete psychology of the English language, a task which a bold professional psychologist might well hesitate to undertake, and one certainly which does not appeal to the student of language either as practicable or eminently useful. A danger of formal elaboration, especially in so complicated a matter as language, lies in the temptation to subdue concrete detail to the demands of beauty and order in the system. For the present purpose, it has seemed advisable to approach the subject not as a system, but from several different directions, each more or less independent, but each also leading to a general understanding of the subject which will result in the end, one may hope, in making clear at least a reasonable attitude. of mind towards the many and variegated problems presented by the English language in its practical applications. A final solution of all difficulties is hopeless, but a sensible apprehension of each new problem as it challenges attention is not an impos

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