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Part of
Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English
Edited by Marina Dossena
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 4] 2015
► pp. 55–71

Five Hundred Mistakes Corrected

An early American English usage guide

| Leiden University, The Netherlands

The anonymous Five hundred mistakes corrected (1856) is one of the very earliest American English usage guides. In its approach, contents and use of proscriptive metalanguage it fits into the tradition of usage guide writing, which had started in England nearly a century before and which continues, with ever increasing numbers of publications, down to the present day. But whereas in England the earliest usage guides served an important function to people who became socially mobile after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in America the rise and popularity of the genre is closely linked to increasing numbers of immigrants from Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century.

Published online: 12 February 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.4.03tie
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Dossena, Marina
2022. “Gems of elocution and humour”. In Earlier North American Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G66], ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo

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