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THE CENTURY HANDBOOK OF WRITING.
By Garland Greever and Easley S. Jones.
THE CENTURY VOCABULARY BUILDER.
By Garland Greever and Joseph M. Bachelor.
THE CENTURY DESK BOOK OF GOOD ENGLISH.
By Garland Greever and Joseph M. Bachelor.
A BUSINESS MAN'S DESK BOOK.
By Garland Greever and Joseph M. Bachelor.
THE FACTS AND BACKGROUNDS OF LITERATURE, English and American.
By George F. Reynolds, University of Colorado, and Garland Greever.
PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE.
By General Henry M. Robert.
Other Volumes To Be Arranged
By GARLAND GREEVER
and
You should know at the outset what this book does not attempt todo. It does not, save to the extent that its own special purpose requires,concern itself with the many and intricate problems of grammar, rhetoric,spelling, punctuation, and the like; or clarify the thousands ofindividual difficulties regarding correct usage. All these matters areimportant. Concise treatment of them may be found in THE CENTURY HANDBOOKOF WRITING and THE CENTURY DESK BOOK OF GOOD ENGLISH, both of whichmanuals are issued by the present publishers. But this volume confinesitself to the one task of placing at your disposal the means of adding toyour stock of words, of increasing your vocabulary.
It does not assume that you are a scholar, or try to make you one. To besure, it recognizes the ends of scholarship as worthy. It levies at everyturn upon the facts which scholarship has accumulated. But it demands ofyou no technical equipment, nor leads you into any of those bypaths ofknowledge, alluring indeed, of which the benefits are not immediate. Forexample, in Chapter V it forms into groups words etymologically akin toeach other. It does this for an end entirely practical—namely, that thewords you know may help you to understand the words you do not know. Didit go farther—did it account for minor differences in these words byshowing that they sprang from related rather than identical originals, didit explain how and how variously their forms have been modified in thelong process of their descent—it would pass beyond its strict utilitarianbounds. This it refrains from doing. And thus everything it contains itrigorously subjects to the test of serviceability. It helps you to bringmore and more words into workaday harness—to gain such mastery over themthat you can speak and write them with fluency, flexibility, precision,and power. It enables you, in your use of words, to attain the readinessand efficiency expected of a capable and cultivated man.
There are many ways of building a vocabulary, as there are many ways ofattaining and preserving health. Fanatics may insist that one should becultivated to the exclusion of the others, just as health-cranks maydeclare that diet should be watched in complete disregard of recreation,sanitation, exercise, the need for medicines, and one's mental attitude tolife. But the s