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Article: Style stands still.
- Article from:
- Style
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Northern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When I began this study, I wondered what a linguist might have to say that would be appropriate and interesting to readers of a journal with a name like Style. In this context, it quickly became obvious to me that my own ordinary understanding of what was meant by style was deficient--deficient enough, anyway, that I decided to perform an act of linguistic research: I looked up style in the dictionary.
And thereby I found my topic--or rather my topics, because there are several senses to which I was led, piecemeal and seriatim. Looking at the very first sense of style in the OED immediately reminded me of a story, which on investigation turned out to be a missing ...