Plain English is an essential tool for effective communication. Information transmitted in letters, documents, reports, contracts, and forms is clearer and more understandable when presented in straightforward terms. The Oxford Guide to Plain English provides authoritative guidance on how towrite plain English using easy-to-follow guidelines which cover straightforward language, sentence length, active and passive verbs, punctuation, grammar, planning, and good organization.This handy guide will be invaluable to writers of all levels. It provides essential guidelines that will allow readers to develop their writing style, grammar, and punctuation. The book also offers help in understanding official jargon and legalese giving the plain English alternatives.This guide gives hundreds of real examples and shows 'before and after' versions of texts of different kinds which will help readers to look critically at their own writing. Helpfully organized into 21 short chapters, each covering a different aspect of writing. Clearly laid out, and easy to use,the Oxford Guide to Plain English is the best guide to writing clear and helpful documents.

This book, written by a team of experts from many countries, provides a comprehensive account of the ways in which translation has brought the major literature of the world into English-speaking culture. Part I discusses theoretical issues and gives an overview of the history of translation into English. Part II, the bulk of the work, arranged by language of origin, offers critical discussions, with bibliographies, of the translation history of specific texts (e.g. the Koran, the Kalevala), authors (e.g. Lucretius, Dostoevsky), genres (e.g. Chinese poetry, twentieth-century Italian prose) and national literatures (e.g. Hungarian, Afrikaans).

This is the ideal handbook for everyone who cares about the proper use of the English language. Combining the Oxford Guide to English Usage and a compact Oxford dictionary, this volume is comprehensive and exceptionally convenient for regular consultation.

The Oxford Guide to English Usage is an essential theme-by-theme guide to correct written and spoken English. Its unique organization by subject gives a complete overview of English usage, providing full advice on both rules and exceptions. Now thoroughly revised to incorporate the latest spelling, pronunciation, and usage information from Oxford's most up-to-date dictionaries, the Guide illustrates points of usage with quotations from real authors, from Virginia Woolf to David Lodge.

The Oxford Guide to World English takes up where its 'mother book', the Oxford Companion to the English Language, left off. Organized by continent, there are chapters on Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australasia, Oceania, and Antarctica. Tom McArthur covers the world's many varieties of English in an interconnected way and notes the ties that bind varieties and regions that are geographically far apart, as with: West African English and African American English; Scots, Ulster Scots, the Scotch-Irish migrations to Appalachia in the US, and country and western music; and aspects of Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Falklands English as southern-hemisphere varieties. The end result is a book that, while invaluable to the specialist, is accessible and appealing to the non-specialist, and covers a vast spread of 'Englishes' from Brummie, Cockney, Estuary, and RP in the UK to New York and New Orleans speech in the US and such other varieties as Indian English, Maori English, and West African Pidgin. This hugely comprehensive work provides a fascinating and novel survey of English as both a pre-eminent 'standard' world language and a family of vigorously diverse regional varieties.