Note: My posts for August 2017, during my 1949 media diet, will be following this style guide (except for the hideous bit about dashes):
The following is based on the text of “The Outline of History” (1920) by H.G. Wells:
dialect: British English, circa A.D. 1920, but with fewer Briticisms than, say, The Economist.
spelling: Oxford spellings (colour, realize, etc), but with some exceptions, like:
analyze, Burmah, Cæsar, encyclopædia, formulæ, Jengis Khan, judgment, Keltic, Lao Tse, Moslem, Nanking, Palæolithic, Peking, Phœnicians, Porto Rico, to-day, to-morrow, spelt, Sanscrit, Thermopylæ, Yugo-Slavia.
contractions: cannot, not “can’t”, is not, not “isn’t”, etc.
dashes: no spaces separate it from adjoining words:
there flowed, about the sixth century B.C.—we do not know to what degree of submergence—a wave of Keltic peoples
numbers: use commas for 10,000 and up. You can write out numbers, even large ones: ninety-three million miles.
percentages: Written out: perhaps ten per cent. or more of the adult population.
weights and measure: English units, especially:
- length: inches, feet, yards, fathoms (6 feet), miles, leagues (3 miles).
- weight: ounces, tons (2240 pounds or 1016 kg).
- area: acres, square miles.
- speed: miles per hour.
- time: hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.
- money: pounds (£), pence. A pound is equal to about 107.5 grams of silver (given that Wells says a talent is equal to £240).
date and time: Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar before 1582. Examples:
- At ten o’clock, on the night of October 11th, 1492
- January, 1793
- October the 1st, 331 B.C.
- the fifth century B.C.
- the seventh century A.D.
- circa 50 B.C. to A.D. 650
- the nineteenth century
- twentieth-century crowd
- the eighties
A.D. can come before or after the year. Generally dropped for centuries after the seventh and years after 1000.
Bible translation: use the King James.
Bible verses: cited as II Chron. xxxvi. 18, 19, 20, etc.
races: Caucasians, Mongolians, Negroes, and Australoids. Prefer Europeans over whites or Caucasians. Prefer negroes over Negroes, blacks or, especially, Africans.
Notes:
- Abyssinia: a country in Ethiopia.
- America: not “the Americas”, but can also mean the United States of America.
- Annam: not Vietnam.
- Arabia: never Saudi Arabia.
- Aryan: not Indo-European.
- Asiatics: not Asians or Orientals.
- barbarism: the stage between savagery and civilization.
- Britain: called Great Britain 28% of the time.
- China: may sometimes rule the countries of Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria or Turkestan.
- Ceylon: not Sri Lanka.
- fantastic and imaginative romances: not science fiction.
- Great War: not World War I or the First World War.
- human: adjective, not a noun. You can say “human beings” but not “humans”.
- Israel: a country of Jews in ancient Palestine.
- Jehovah: god of the Jews, more often known as just “God”.
- Jesus of Nazareth: often just Jesus but almost never Jesus Christ.
- Mesopotamia: not Iraq.
- Neanderthal men: not Neanderthals.
- Near East: and Far East, but not Middle East.
- Persia: called Iran 4% of the time.
- Piltdown sub-man: still a fact of science.
- race prejudice – not racism.
- Siam: not Thailand.
- Somaliland: not Somalia.
- savages: not primitives or hunter-gatherers.
- tropical Africa: not black Africa or sub-Saharan Africa.
- West Indies: not Caribbean.
science fiction mode: If you use a word that is newer than 1920, like television or racism, you will have to make clear what it means, just as Wells had to do with time machine and heat ray in his science fiction.
Maps from 1919 and 1920 (click to enlarge):
– Abagond, 2017.
Update (August 2nd): This will be my style guide for August 2017.
Sources: Project Gutenberg, Omniatlas.
See also:
- style guide
- H.G. Wells
- a 1949 media diet?
- new words since 1949
- Attic units – used by ancient Greek authors
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Reblogged this on IBHE Collaborative University.
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Update (August 2nd): This will be my style guide for August 2017.
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Ja. The period from 1918-1922 was pretty chaotic. I find most history textbooks from school didn’t really cover what happened in this period except the Treaty of Versailles, and make it look like it was a clean transition from the end of World War I to the interwar period.
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When H.G. Wells’ preferred terms and spellings of 1920 became outdated (were no longer the most frequently used in printed English):
1801: Caesar > Cæsar
1879: Burma > Burmah
1912: Neanderthals > Neanderthal men
1918: 10% > ten per cent.
1920
1931: today > to-day
1933: Puerto Rico > Porto Rico
1939: Ethiopia > Abyssinia
1940: Iraq > Mesopotamia
1942: First World War > Great War
1943: Middle East > Near East
1942: Muslim > Moslem
1950: Israel > Palestine
1952: Vietnam > Annam
1953: Thailand > Siam
1953: Yahweh > Jehovah
1954: racism > race prejudice
1954: Asians > Asiatics
1963: Iran > Persia
1963: Somalia > Somaliland
1969: Caribbean > West Indies
1973: blacks > negroes (capitalized or not)
1975: 1940s > forties
1981: Sri Lanka > Ceylon
1984: sub-Saharan Africa > tropical Africa
1986: Beijing > Peking
1990: Nanjing > Nanking
2002: BC > B.C.
Never generally preferred: Keltic, Jenghis Khan, Yugo-Slavia.
In other words, what seems outdated now did not seem that way back then. He was more or less in the mainstream of printed English usage of his time.
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[…] of the Charlottesville riot. The original has been edited to make it fit an F-pattern in an H.G. Wells style. I added a message from Superman in 1949 at the […]
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