Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A First Course of Commercial Correspondence and Office Routine
Technical and Learned Expressions - The constant use of such words without cause is a peculiarly repellent form of fine writing. But where the nature of the subject compels the use of them, there is a difficulty. A way out is to use them as seldom as possible, taking care when using them to make the connecting and descriptive words studiedly simple, so that the reader may con centrate his attention upon the more difficult words. If this simple rule had been followed by most of those who have written our standard philosophical and scientific treatises, these works would be more widely read and better understood by the general public.
Obsolete Words - Words that have passed out of current use are not appropriate to any kind of composition, except, of course, dialogue which attempts to reproduce the speech of former days. The following are examples: methinks, meseems, beholden, in sooth, hight, yclept, whilom, erst.
Foreign Words and Phrases - With some exceptions the use of foreign words and phrases is to be condemned. The mother tongue is varied and vivid enough to express all we want to say. Some foreign words and phrases, as e. G. Per se, vice versa, bona fide, pro rata, regime, have been found useful, and can now be considered as English words, but others such as, au revoir, conge, pater, beem ideal, in medias res, non probandi, are too often used now-a-days by people who have little French and less Latin. It is stupid to suppose that the continual use of such expressions is the sign-manual of a superior education. They have become much too hackneyed to warrant any such conclusion.
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