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As a normative grammar, and with its critical footnotes, Lowth's grammar heralds the next stage in the English standardisation process. It anticipates the rise of the usage guide in the next decades of the century. Linguists and normative grammarians form different communities of practice: studying them as such is the domain of Normative Linguistics.

Drawing on data from the Hyper Usage Guide of English (HUGE) database (Straaijer 2014), this chapter sets the context for the other chapters of the collection by exploring the usage guide as a genre since the earliest publication in 1770. While modern usage guides overlap in form and content with other genres of works about language, there are distinct characteristics that identify them as a separate genre. After this genre had slowly been evolving for 150 years, H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) became a model for future publications. However, the usage guide remains a strongly author-driven genre, resulting in much variation in form and content. After continued development and professionalization from the mid-twentieth century onwards, two subtypes within the genre seem to have emerged: one striving for comprehensiveness and the other offering entertaining narrative. This variety may account for the enduring popularity of the genre.

This chapter explores the complexity of attitudes to the usage problems ain’t, literally, and like in American English, from the point of view of both prescriptivist discourse found in usage guides and speakers’ ideas about these usage problems. I argue that the stakes for speakers involved in using certain usage problems are different in different contexts, and that these usage problems merit more serious sociolinguistic attention. I pay particular attention to how the attitudes of speakers towards the usage problems considered in this chapter differ from those expressed in usage guides. One of the conclusions of this analysis is that different usage problems have different social implications for different speakers. Grammatical usage problems in particular seem to be more closely associated with education, although regional and language context sensitivity play a role as well.

Public debates on language use today have switched platforms from newspaper columns to social media, and instead of turning the pages of printed usage guides, English speakers most commonly turn to the internet for usage advice. One of the most successful web-based usage guides, here referred to as usage guides 2.0, is the educational podcast ‘Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing’, which is also available in blog format enabling comments from the audience. This paper presents an analysis of the blog entries and comments from this podcast with a two-fold aim. First, Grammar Girl, as a web-based usage guide, is compared to traditional usage guides available in the HUGE database in order to shed light on potential changes within the usage guide genre that have occurred in the new medium. Second, the analysis of the blog comments attempts to provide a systematic overview of online metalinguistic discussions.

Usage guides are an extremely popular genre, as is evident from new titles being published year after year and established ones being revised and reprinted. They are a marketable product, as both writers and publishers know. The genre did not start with Fowler, despite what many people think; it has a long history going back to the late eighteenth century. Usage advice today is also found online, while it was already the subject of satire in Punch during the nineteenth century. Yet how many usage problems there are is something authors—journalists, writers, but also linguists—show no consensus on. Usage problems come and go, and attitudes to them, expressed both by the general public and by usage guide writers, are found to change over the years. Some works remain remarkably conservative, which appears to be what is desired by readers who often feel insecure about what exactly proper English is.

The famous English novelist Kingsley Amis also wrote a usage guide, called The King’s English, published posthumously in 1997. This title refers to his illustrious predecessor Henry Fowler, who is frequently quoted in the book and even has an entry of his own—unusual for the genre. In this chapter I will argue that Amis’s The King’s English is not a typical usage guide. Though it does offer language advice, most of the entries read like brief linguistic—often humorous—narratives rather than typical usage items. His section on Americanisms, is an example of this; and he also published instances of usage advice elsewhere, as on the once controversial hopefully. This chapter therefore argues that the book was actually a publisher’s project, aiming to profit both from Amis’s reputation when he was still remembered well by the public and from the growing market for usage advice literature at the time.

Ernest Gowers wrote the first, pamphlet version of Plain Words in 1948. It had been commissioned by the Treasury, and was designed to encourage clarity and kindness in the writing of over-formal, patronizing civil servants. Despite this focus, it became an immediate bestseller when offered as a book for general sale. In 1954, Gowers combined subsequent iterations of the title to produce a final version, The Complete Plain Words; and though he came to wish he could revise this work too, he got entangled instead in creating his 1965 edition of Fowler, after which he promptly died. The Complete Plain Words, revised by others in 1973 and 1986, has never yet gone out of print. But the later revisions look increasingly unsympathetic, so in 2014 Rebecca Gowers, the author’s great-granddaughter, agreed to update the book working directly from the 1954 edition. This proved to be easier said than done.