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

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Five Hundred Mistakes Corrected

An early American English usage guide

 | Leiden University, The Netherlands
Published online: 12 February 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.4.03tie
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.
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2024.  ‘To be avoided by every correct Writer’: George Harris’s Observations upon the English Language and the first English usage guide . Language & History 67:3 ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
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2022. “Gems of elocution and humour”. In Earlier North American Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G66], ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
2019. Usage guides and the Age of Prescriptivism. In Norms and conventions in the history of English [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 347], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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