Assignment One

Purpose 

The purposes of this assignment are multifold.  First, it will engage you in the act of writing.  Writing is a process, a series of various activities that lead to a complete product.  You will generate, organize, create, compose, revise, edit and title--seven stages in the process of writing.  Second, it will situate you in this class, for you will discover your strengths and weaknesses with respect to writing.  Third, it will become an evaluative tool by which we (you and I) will measure your progress. 

Content 

Your essay must address your past, present and future relationships with writing.  Specifically, you must answer all the following questions.

1. Who first taught you how to write?
2. What was the first piece that you wrote?
3. Did you enjoy the courses in composition in high school?  Describe those courses.
4. What are your strengths and weaknesses with respect to writing?
5. Do you like or dislike writing, or are you ambivalent toward writing?
6. How frequently will you write after your schooling?
7. Describe the goals (at least five) you will accomplish during the course of this course.

I encourage you to address other aspects of your relationship, but the essay must not exceed 100,000 words or 400 pages.  Format your essay in accordance with the conventions established by the Modern Language Association (MLA). 

Process 

I have determined your purpose for writing, which is to inform; I have defined your audience, which is the class.  I also have provided you a topic, which is your past, present and future relationships with writing.  The next stage is to generate information.  We will discuss reading, brainstorming, journal writing, listing, and mapping--activities you may want to do rather than freewriting and focused freewriting.  However, for this essay you will freely write for ten minutes, generating as much information on the topic as you can.  According to Peter Elbow:

     The idea is simply to write for ten minutes (later on, perhaps
     fifteen or twenty).  Don't stop for anything.  Go quickly without
     rushing.  Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to
     wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought
     to use, or to think about what you are doing.  If you can't think of
     a word or a spelling, just use a squiggle or else write, "I can't
     think of it."  Just put down something.  The easiest thing is just to
     put down whatever is in your mind.  If you get stuck [sic] it's fine
     to write [sic] "I can't think what to say, [sic] I can't think what to
     say [sic]" as many times as you want; or repeat the last word you
     wrote over and over again; or anything else.  The only
     requirement is that you never stop.* 

Focused freewriting provides the benefits of freewriting but with regard to specific information.  First, read what you wrote and mark any words, phrases or sentences that seem important or useful.  Second, freely write for ten more minutes--focusing on the words, phrases or sentences that you marked.  To generate more specific information, you will need to repeat the technique. 

Particulars 

You do not need to organize the information in the temporal (from past to present to future) or the sequential (from 1 to 2 to 3 ...) manners I stated.  We will discuss and you will engage in the entire process of writing: organizing your information, creating a working thesis, writing a first draft, revising your discourse, editing your discourse, and titling your essay.  Near the end of the semester, on the day of your final exam, you will submit in a portfolio your freewrite, focused freewrite, outline, first draft, and final draft.

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     *Peter Elbow, Writing without Teachers, 2nd ed.  (New York: Oxford UP, 1998) 1.

Managing the Complexity of Writing

Introduction

Before an advanced writer begins to write a sentence, he has nearly a million ways of writing what he wants to communicate.  But with each word he writes, the field of choices narrows.  The sentence seems to take the initiative, moving in the direction that Standard English allows.  The advanced writer responds to such constraints almost unconsciously, providing the words and structures that different contexts allow.  He may struggle sometimes to write himself out of an ill-formed sentence, but the sense of what he can and cannot do within the limits of the rules that govern formal writing is certain.  He struggles for clarity, conciseness and effectiveness, not merely correctness.  In other words, for him the formation of sentences is primarily a concern of style, of affecting his readers' eyes, mouths and ears.

Intermediate writers seldom enjoy such ease with writing.  Their concern is not with making sentences better, but with making sentences right.  Their concern is with correctness, for they lack familiarity with Standard English.  Much of their uneasiness can be blamed on the writing process itself, which, because it is different from the speaking process (refer to "Punctuation"), creates a rule-consciousness that can prevent a writer from communicating as clearly, concisely and effectively as she can in a speech situation.  

Men and women who have been speaking in sentences for years cannot be ignorant of sentences.  But when they write formally, which they rarely do except in academic situations, they often mismanage complexity.  There are three reasons for such mismanagement.  The first explanation will center on what the students have not learned about Standard English, the second on their attitudes toward themselves as students, and the third on their unfamiliarity with the process of writing.  Each of the explanations suggests a method of instruction: one that focuses on diction, one that stresses the value of writing, and one that focuses on process.

Diction 

First, an intermediate writer is not likely to have the diction to create the consolidations necessary in writing.  If writing forces one to be more explicit then one would be when speaking and if such explicitness requires various types of consolidations (refer to "Punctuation"), the student who has read and written infrequently may not be able to use some or many of the patterns that consolidate information.  There are at least three situations in which a lack of vocabulary negatively affects the formation of sentences.  A student may not know the word that would enable her to consolidate sentences; she may not know the grammatically appropriate form of a word for a sentence; she may not know a word's appropriate contexts.

Unfortunately vocabulary grows slowly, with the inclusion of a word's acceptable contexts acquired from reading.  Word-class distinctions--learned via exercises that increase students' awareness of suffixes--are also gradually incorporated into the sentences students write themselves.  Finally, students learn the allowable contexts of individual words usually by making mistakes, not by memorizing rules.

Value

Many intermediate writers have learned that words must be correct with respect to grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Because they fear the rules, intermediate writers are not able to use their language as effectively as advanced writers.  That leads us to the second reason for their mismanagement of complexity: first-year college students often lack confidence in themselves and are afraid that writing will expose their weaknesses.  Considering that writing is an act of confidence, an exhibition of one's experiences, emotions and thoughts, a feeling of inadequacy inhibits self-expression, hinders exploration and growth.  Furthermore, many of the assignments--and I am including those I struggled to complete as a freshman--are unmotivational and stipulatory.  Restricted to a particular topic (not her own), to an unfamiliar style (academic), and to an impersonal point of view (usually her professor's), an intermediate writer will not begin sentences with actual subjects, will use passive verbal constructions, will be obscure, and will be verbose.

Process

But even advanced writers initially have such problems.  What primarily separates intermediate writers from advanced writers--and this is the third reason for intermediate writers' mismanagement of complexity--is that advanced writers write through their problems and return to them after they have written a draft, often several drafts.  In other words, intermediate writers have an incomplete process of writing.  Attempting to manage everything at once, they disrupt the flow of their thoughts and attend to problems as they arise.  Writing, intermediate writers think, is about adhering to the rules, and spelling, punctuation, sentential structure, coherence, et cetera must be correct the first time.  But if an intermediate writer does not concern herself with the task of being correct, if she realizes she will be able to perfect her essay later, she will be able to concentrate on what she is communicating, not how she is communicating.  The gap between intention and execution is closed with additions, subtractions, substitutions and inversions--activities that require words to be on a sheet of paper or a screen.

Conclusion

The subject of the privacy and mess of writing--of how advanced writers work, of how and where they get their information, of how they shape it into form--such information is beneficial to intermediate writers.  Because most academic assignments--indeed most writing assignments throughout life--are stipulatory, an intermediate writer more than likely has developed a problematic strategy for writing that makes it difficult for her to judge the fit between her intention and her execution.  She thinks of purpose as what someone else wants of her.  She has learned that she must understand and capture the sense of what someone else wrote.  As a result, she discards what she needs most to be able to write well: her own responses, her own thoughts.  Teachers must inculcate upon their students the importance of noticing their responses to things and to value those responses as possible content for academic essays.

Punctuation

Introduction 

The punctuative errors that commonly appear in intermediate writers' essays reflect the students' inexperience with formal writing and therefore with the punctuative code that serves to signal meanings readers would otherwise miss.  Although the code includes more than a dozen marks, intermediate writers use only the most common: the capital, the comma, the period, the question mark, the exclamation mark, and the quotation mark.  Semicolons appear infrequently; parentheses, hyphens and dashes appear less often; and ellipses, brackets and italics appear almost never.  That means intermediate writers express little through punctuation, whereas advanced writers with knowledge of such slight notations add both flexibility and meaning to their sentences.  Parentheses and dashes, for example, help writers overcome the linearity of sentences, and colons are an economical way to present series.  From a reader's point of view, punctuation provides guidance for one who must otherwise proceed intermittently through a writer's thoughts. 

Speaking and Writing 

Limited mainly to periods and commas, an inexperienced writer is further restricted by her uncertain use of such marks: commas appear at odd junctures within sentences, and both commas and periods signal sentential terminations, or what appear to be terminations, for the writer frequently mistakes a fragment for a whole sentence or joins two sentences with a comma (comma splice) or with no punctuation at all (run-on).  The difficulty with signifying the boundaries of sentences has led some to complain that students nowadays "don't know what an English sentence is."  That is, of course, not true.  They intuitively understand the structure of sentences; they have been speaking in sentences since childhood.  What they have not been doing, however, is stopping to consider whether their speech contains, among other things, a subject and predicate or has a dependent clause.  In other words they have been creating diverse sentences without knowing the nomenclature for the constructions they have been producing. 

One reason writing sentences is difficult stems from the differences between speech and writing.  Oral communication is economical, progressing without complex syntax.  Gestures, facial expressions, and alternate responses advance a conversation.  Those who formally write as they talk--and/or message--are not accustomed to using their entire syntactic repertoire.  Writing sentences requires punctuative marks that have few equivalents in speech.  Although we temporally pause in oral conversations, we indicate such pauses in written communication with an array of symbols, each mark having a slightly different function and effect. 

Without some convention for showing the groupings and relationships of words, for suggesting pace and intonation, the written sentence becomes a puzzle to reader.  Readers expect sentences to contain conventional punctuation; readers also expect the most important information to be at the beginnings and ends of sentences.  The beginning of a sentence reveals the subject and either establishes a context for new information or links the sentence to the preceding one by providing transitional information.  The end of the sentence reveals new information.  Whatever is in the middle receives the least attention from the reader.  An inexperienced writer must learn to place information in the correct area--helping her readers move fluidly from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, section to section. 

In order to do such, she must be certain about where written sentences end.  The fact that she produces sentences in speech does not mean she understands periods in writing.  Frequently an inexperienced writer perceives periods as signals for major pauses and commas as signals for minor pauses, but she is not aware of the role that grammatical structure plays in determining which of the many pauses produced in speech need marks and which do not need marks.  Speech is, again, an intermixture of sounds and silences.  Half of spontaneous speech is nonspeech--with pauses marking rates of respiration, isolating certain words for emphasis, facilitating phonological maneuvers, regulating the rhythms of thought and articulation, and suggesting grammatical structure.  In contrast punctuation provides a sense of structure in a sentence--first by indicating its boundaries and second by showing relationships among certain words, phrases and clauses within the sentence.  To state it simply, punctuation helps a reader predict how a sentence is leading him. 

Leading a reader is difficult for a writer to do without an analytical grasp of the sentence.  Grammatically dependent structures at the ends of sentences may seem independent, adverbial clauses at the beginnings of sentences may seem like sentences, the second part of a compound structure may seem like a sentence, or a string of sentences may feel like a single sentence.  A haphazard approach to punctuation thwarts one of the primary purposes of punctuation, which is to help the reader see in advance how the part he is about to read relates to what he has just read.  If he sees a period, he prepares himself for a new subject; if he sees a comma, he withholds closure.  But when such marks are interchanged, transposed or omitted, the code no longer works. 

We can blame some of the inconsistencies, inventions and omissions on carelessness.  The small marks do not look very important.  They do not seem to mean much either, at least nothing that the writer does not know already through her writer's ear, which guides her in both the writing and reading of her own sentences.  But aural competency does not necessarily correlate to physical reality, an ability to manage the structures that writers depend upon to overcome the redundancy, fragmentation and loose sequences that are natural in speech--adverbial clauses, participial phrases, relative clauses, appositional constructions, and logical connectives such as therefore and however. 

What one senses through puctuative errors is a caution about losing control of the sentence by allowing it to become too long--that is, too full of embedded structures.  Combined with the effort to simplify individual sentences grammatically by separating them into smaller segments is another effort to link sentences rhetorically by using commas as conjunctions; by overusing words like and, but, that or because; or by ignoring terminal punctuation.  Both strategies--fragmenting information and linking information--reveal larger problems in composition. 

Fragmenting Information 

The urge to fragment information reflects a need to practice with the recognition and creation of simple subjective and predicative phrases, with the embedding of clauses within sentences (focusing on who, which, that, when and if forms), with the embedding of appositional forms, and with the embedding of -ing phrases.  Writer's handbooks--such as The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers and The Little, Brown Handbook--contain exercises that both help intermediate writers gain experience with embedding and give them a basic vocabulary of words that signal embedding, particularly those words that seem to lead to most fragments: wh-words, that, although, though, even though, unless, if, because, since, so that, et cetera.  Because those words have meanings that can blur or merge with the meanings of linking words that do not embed (for examples, when and then, even though and nevertheless, because and thus), students will need to remember them in other ways.  It may help to know that embedding words are not moveable, whereas logical connectives like then, nevertheless or thus do not need to be at the beginnings of sentences. 

Linking Information 

The urge to link information--the second compositional problem--reflects a need to learn the different ways in which sentences can rhetorically transcend their punctuative boundaries.  A speaker stops when she ends a unit of thought, which is often short of a complete sentence.  For many inexperienced writers, the need to mark sentences inhibits the progress of their thoughts.  In speech they can produce sentences as unconsciously as they can walk; in writing they must stop to deliberate over what is and what is not a sentence.  In the process they break the rhythm of their thoughts.  As a result such writers seem to use commas to continue the thought between sentences.  Similar to a comma, and prolongs sentences.  Although and frees the writer from the work of making her sentences reflect the different levels of generalizations that her thoughts imply, it imposes upon the reader the work of trying to determine what the relationships are. 

Excepting most writing teachers, readers will not expend the energy to discover the relationships.  Thus, the writer must learn to use the two forms that substitute for the period: a comma before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, or and so) and a semicolon. 

Comma 

The rules intermediate writers have learned for punctuating and are unreliable.  Some students use no punctuation; other insert a comma before all ands.  Most students have never begun a sentence with and (or but).  Where the focus on punctuation is on sentential boundaries, the student needs to realize that a comma before an and has the significance of a period--that is, it signals the end of one sentence and the beginning of another.  Without it the two sentences would collide, forcing the reader to retrace his steps.  Thus, the sentence "She likes her dog and other dogs like her" may be read initially as "She likes her dog and other dogs" until the reader discovers that he has beheaded the second sentence by mistaking the function of and as a coordinator of two direct objects rather than two sentences.  With a comma the writer had a chance to prepare the reader for a new sentence.  As for beginning, rather than joining, sentences with and (and but), the student may have learned incorrectly to view it as an error.  But usage clearly permits it. 

Semicolon 

Like a period and a comma before a coordinating conjunction, a semicolon announces the beginning of another sentence.  But intermediate writers rarely use it, probably because students must learn a vocabulary of logical connectives if they want to reduce the pressure on commas and coordinators.  Although the full vocabulary is extensive, most of the words signal roughly one of six types of logical relationships: furthermore, however, therefore, for example, that is, and then. 

Learning to use such connectives is a matter not of learning to be logical as of learning to signal the logic that usually is implicit in what students are communicating.  Intermediate writers need to be aware of the options they have in placing and punctuating such connectives.  Whereas periods, coordinators and semicolons are not moveable forms because they signify grammatical boundaries, logical connectives are moveable--their most common locations being at the beginning of a sentence when a preceding sentence is terminated by a semicolon and at various points after a subject when a preceding sentence is terminated by a period. 

Conclusion 

Rather than teaching sentences via rhetorical classifications (loose, balanced and periodic) or grammatical categories (simple, compound, complex and compound-complex), sentence-combining and sentence-decombining exercises will increase the complexity of intermediate writers' sentences.  Such exercises, which are in many writers' handbooks, reveal ways to construct sentences without resorting to terminology, and they allow discussions of rhetorical choices, differences in emphasis that work more effectively in some contexts than in others.

The Wonders of Webster's

A writer, momentarily idle in her art, reaches for her most essential tool.  No, it is not a pen or a mouse; rather, it is her Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.*  Named after Noah Webster, it is a published list, in alphabetical order, of the words of the English language--explaining and defining them and providing, among other things, etymologies, illustrations and synonyms.  Her dictionary is, of course, only one of many that have been published throughout the world.  Dictionaries were produced in Chinese, Greek, Islamic, and other advanced, early cultures.  The first modern lexicographer in the West was Nathan Bailey who published the Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721 and the Dictionarium Britannicum in 1730, to which Samuel Johnson referred as he prepared his Dictionary of the English Language in the mid-eighteenth century.  Noah Webster (1758--1843) was the first American lexicographer.  A graduate of Yale, he fought in the American Revolution and, after the war, practiced law in Hartford, Connecticut--his birthplace.  Webster was considered the chief American authority on the English language after he had published Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which became a national bestseller.  Webster's Compendious Dictionary was published in 1806, and it was followed by his greatest work, The American Dictionary of the English Language.  It was published in 1828, revised by Webster before his death, and continues to be revised and abridged. 

Webster's legacy lasts with the adoption of his name by various publishing companies.  One such company, Merriam-Webster, is the publisher of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.  The literary tool is much more than  a list of the words of the English language.  It begins with a section of explanatory notes for understanding the style, form and symbols used throughout the lexicon.  There are sections on signs and symbols, on style (that is, correct forms of punctuation), on the documentation of sources, and on forms of address.  Also in this particular edition are a guide to pronunciation, an explanation of the symbols regarding pronunciation, and a list of the abbreviations in the dictionary.  Although frequently overlooked the section on biographical names is an invaluable reference tool.  It contains the names of persons both living and deceased who made notable contributions to human society.  Each entry begins with the name or title by which the person is known, and the person's last name, personal name, birth and death dates, nationality, and occupation or status follow respectively.  The section on geographical places includes limited information on all the countries and their most important regions, cities, and geographical features.  The publishers provide the spelling and pronunciation of the name, the nature of the feature, its location, and, in some cases, statistical data.  The ninth edition also holds a list of the colleges and universities in both the United States and Canada.  Each entry includes the name of the institution, its location, and the date of its founding. 

The most important section is, of course, the lexicon.  For an inexperienced etymologist, searching for a word and interpreting its history, sense and usage may be a daunting task.  Indeed there is an incredible amount of information in a small space, and the way the editors present the information may confuse some.  Thus, it is imperative that the inquisitive writer refers to the explanatory sections when she comes to an entry that contains bewildering material.  For example, on pages 164 and 165 of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, two words are at the top of each page.  Why are they there?  After referring to the explanatory notes, the writer knows they are guidewords, and the entries fall alphabetically between them.  In this case board is the first entry on page 164, and bolero is the last entry on page 165. 

The main entries are in boldface and are flush with the left margin of each column, of which there are two on each page.  The entries follow one another in alphabetical order.  When the word also follows a main entry, such as "Bogomil also Bogomile," the variant spelling after also occurs less frequently than the first and is not preferable.  (165)  But when the word or follows an entry, such as "bodhisattva or boddhisattva," either variant is acceptable.  (164)  Following a main entry, the pronunciation key is between a pair of reversed slashes (\\).  A high-set mark (') indicates the strongest accent, and a low-set mark indicates a medium stress.  For example, the pronunciation key for bock is "\'bak\" (164).  Variances in pronunciation of a word may appear.  An italic label indicating a part of speech follows the pronunciation.  The eight traditional parts of speech and their abbreviations are noun (n), pronoun (pron), adjective (adj), verb (vb), adverb (adv), preposition (prep), conjunction (conj), and interjection (interj).  The abbreviations vt (transitive verb) and vi (intransitive verb) may occur in place of the abbreviation vb.  The etymology is the historical material in square brackets ([]) that precede a definition.  The pre-English source is abbreviated.  OE (Old English), ME (Middle English), E (modern English), F (French), G (German), L (Latin), Gk (Greek), and Scand  (Scandinavian) are the most common abbreviations.  Words of unknown origin are labeled as such.  The date of the earliest use in English of a word is in parentheses and immediately prefaces a definition. 

A boldface colon introduces a definition.  Lowercase letters in boldface separate the subsenses of a word, and numerals in parentheses indicate a further division.  The order of the senses is in a historical hierarchy.  That does not mean the first sense gave rise to the second meaning and so forth.  The entries of plants and animals include both their genera (singular nouns in capital letters) and species.  A verbal illustration after a definition may employ the word in a specific context.  Angle brackets enclose the illustration, and the editor replaces the word with a lightface swung dash (~).  Usage notes that provide supplementary information about a word follow some definitions.  Also, brief paragraphs with synonyms and statements that clarify their senses may come after a definition. 

Comprehensive examples of everything I have been discussing are the entries of boast:
     1boast \'bost\ n [ME boost] (14c)  1: the act or instance of
      boasting: BRAG  2: a cause for pride  - boast-ful \'bost-f l\ adj 
      - boast-ful-ly \-f-le\ adv  - boast-ful-ness n
     2boast vi (14c)  1: to puff oneself up in speech : speak vain
      gloriously  2:archaic: GLORY, EXULT ~  vt  1: to speak of or
      assert with excessive pride
      2 a: to possess and often call attention to (something that is a
      source of pride)  ~s a new sports car  b: HAVE, CONTAIN  a
      room ~ing no more than a desk and a chair - boast-er n
      syn BOAST, BRAG, VAUNT, CROW mean to express pride in
      oneself or one's accomplishments.  BOAST often suggests
      ostentation and exaggeration  ready to boast of every trivial
      success but it may imply a claiming with proper and justifiable
      pride  the town boasts one of the best hospitals in the area
      BRAG suggests crudity and artlessness in glorifying oneself
      boys bragging to each other  VAUNT usu. connotes more pomp
      and bombast than BOAST and less crudity or naivete than
      BRAG  charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up - 1Cor
      13:4(AV)  CROW usu. implies exultant boasting or bragging
      loved to ~ about his ancestors
     3boast vt [origin unknown] (1823): to shape (stone) roughly with
      a broad chisel in sculpture and stonecutting as a preliminary to
      finer work  (164)

Those examples provide only a sampling of the information in the ninth edition.  Lexicography is a comprehensive and involved science.  Some entries in a lexicon may include material I did not discuss, and the information I delineated may be in a different format.  I suggest that as a writer you analyze the various sections that explain the intricacies of your dictionary.  Only then will the wonders of Webster's easily unfold before your eyes.
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     *Frederick C. Mish, ed., Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1991).  

Brief History of English and Dictionaries

Introduction

Why should you care about the history of English and dictionaries?  If you know the history of some thing, then you know that thing better.  Think about a friendship you share with a person.  It is more than likely that y'all have a symbiotic relationship because y'all know each other's past, are a part of each other's past.  Apply that to English and dictionaries.  Let them become more a part of your life.

English

Lexicographers (those who compile dictionaries) categorize English as Indo-European, a hypothetical language that originated in central Europe then spread east and west.  English is part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language, which, again, is a hypothetical language.  It was Sir William Jones who devised the theory of the Indo-European language.  He went to India, learned Sanskrit, and noticed it was similar to European languages.  Some regard him as the first linguist (a person who studies the nature, structure and variation of language).

Linguists have created an inexact timeline of the origin of English.  From 500 to 0 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), the Celts, who were Indo-Europeans, settled in Britain (England, Scotland and Ireland).  The Celts spoke Celtic, not English.  From 0 to 400 C.E. (Common Era), the Romanization of Britain occurred.  The Romans spoke Latin.  What survive from Celtic are geographical names such as London and Thames.  What survive from Latin are geographical names with the suffix -castra, such as Dorchester and Lancaster.  When their empire began to collapse, the Romans left Britain.  As a result Britain was attacked frequently, so the Celts invited the Angles, Saxons and Jutes--Germanic tribes from the European continent--to protect them. 

A mix of Celtic and Germanic, Old English (OE) developed between 450 and 1066 C.E.  It is an inflective language with Germanic (Scandinavian) vocabulary.  Vestiges (evidence) of inflection are irregular plurals--feet from foot, for example--and pronouns--I and me, for examples.  Inflection is an alteration of the form of a word by adding affixes--as in dogs from dog--or by changing the form of a base--as in spoke from speak--to indicate grammatical features such as number, person, mood or tense.  Even though only 14% of modern English words are Germanic, they are the 1000 most used words. 

But we must not skip over Middle English (ME), which developed between 1066 and 1500 C.E.  In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, France defeated King Harold Godwineson of England at the Battle of Hastings.  Radical changes in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary occurred under French rule.  Bilingualism developed.  Words such as cow, pig or swine, sheep, chicken, and deer were used by the natives, but words such as beef, pork, mutton, poultry, and venison were used by the French. 

Linguists divide Modern English (E) into two periods.  During the early Modern English period, between 1500 and 1700 C.E., words such as thou, ye and hither were in use.  The King James Bible (1611) influenced the vocabulary of this period, and the British borrowed numerous learned words from Latin.

English as we now know it primarily consists of Germanic (OE), French (ME), and Latin and Greek (E) words.  Everyday words are Germanic, polite words are French, and elevated words are Latin and Greek.  Compare the following synonyms.
      Germanic             French                    Latin

1. ask                    question                  interrogate
2. kill                    destroy                    exterminate
3. guts                   bowels                    intestines
4. time                  age                           epoch
5. begin                 commence             initiate
6. work                  labor                       exertion 
7. goodness           virtue                      probity 

Which diction (choice and use of words) do you want when you speak publicly?  You want mostly Germanic words because they are more concrete (perceptible by the senses) and more emotive (express emotion).  Which diction do you want when you write an academic essay?  French, Latin and Greek words are more suitable for such essays.  Which diction do you want when you write professionally?  You want to use Germanic and French words, depending on your audience and medium--memorandum, e-mail, letter, et cetera.  Which diction do you want when you write creatively?  You may want Germanic, French, Latin and/or Greek diction: it depends on the setting, the character, details, rhythm, et cetera. 

I am not suggesting that you will use only Germanic words when you speak publicly or only Fench, Latin and Greek words when you write academically.  All of the aforementioned communicative situations requires continual consideration of one's audience--the person or persons to whom you are communicating.  In other words, your audience will determine your diction. 

Dictionaries

If one of your goals is to become a better writer, you will want to refer frequently to a dictionary, ensuring one is next to you whenever you read and/or write.  But before we discuss the elements of a typical entry in a dictionary, we need to discuss the evolution of the dictionary. 

A lexicon is a dictionary.  Lexicography is the science of producing dictionaries.  Lexis is the Greek word for word.  The suffix -graphy is from the Latin suffix -graphia, to write.  The history of lexicography in the West begins with the Italian Academy (1612), where scholars worked under the Medici family.  At the French Academy (1694), scholars worked under King Louis XIV (The Sun King).  It supposedly took 40 scholars 40 years to produce the first French dictionary. 

English word-lists were compiled during the Renaissance.  But it was not until Nathan Bailey, the first modern lexicographer, published the Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721 that England had its first proper dictionary.  Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) was the work to which Samuel Johnson referred when he prepared his Dictionary of the English Language in the mid-eighteenth century. 

Noah Webster was the first American lexicographer.  He was considered the chief American authority on the English language after he had published Grammatical Institute of the English Language.  His Compendious Dictionary (1806) was followed by his greatest work, The American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), which continues to be revised and abridged. 

Sir James Murray oversaw the creation of the New English Dictionary (NED) and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  Over 20 volumes the OED is an historical dictionary in that it attempts to provide the complete history and all senses of a word since the early Renaissance.  Dictionaries are prescriptive (inform people of the proper spellings, pronunciations and uses of words), descriptive (provide information only), or both.  The American Dictionary of the English Language is prescriptive; online dictionaries are descriptive.  Is the tenth edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary prescriptive, descriptive or both?  Refer to "The Wonders of Webster's" to help you decide.