Introduction

The scene for the book is set and definitions are provided for the central notions of “usage guide” and “usage problem”, illustrated by relevant British and American examples. Topics discussed are the popularity of usage guides, competition among publishers who view usage guides as marketable products, and the reading public of usage guides. The format of usage guides is described, the types of writers and the development of a database for the study of usage guides in a historical context. While usage guides arose in England during the final stage of the English standardisation process (prescription), prescriptivism, as a more negatively viewed subsequent stage, may have an American origin. The popularity of usage guides is due to the absence of an institutional form of prescriptivism for English, with publishers fuelling linguistic insecurity among the general public. The survey Attitudes to English Usage by Mittins et al. (1970) is introduced, with more recent data being obtained from informants to study subsequent developments. With linguists generally preferring a descriptive approach to language, studying prescriptivism belongs to the field of sociolinguistics, where there is a growing academic interest in the topic.