| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 100
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| hand (Elizabeth Barrett Browning). This sense provides a useful distinction from give, for give can sometimes be confusing because it means both “to transfer physical possession” and “to transfer ownership.” Unfortunately, the use of gift as a verb in Modern English is tainted by its association with the language of advertising and publicity (as in Gift her with this copper warming plate). A large majority of the Usage Panel rejected the usage in an earlier survey. When you want clarity, use a substitutes such as give as a gift, bestow, or donate. | 1 |
go
| | Parents reading picture books aloud to their infant children have always used go to produce nonlinguistic noises, as in The train went “toot” and The cow goes “moo.” Now their grown-up infants use go to report speech, as in Then he goes, “You think you’re real smart, don’t you?” For speakers young enough to get away with it, this usage is useful when telling a story that has direct quotations, particularly when the user wishes to mimic the accent or intonation of the original speaker. You should restrict this sense of go, however, to the “narrative present” used in informal speech and omit it from more formal contexts. | 2 |
| More at
like. | 3 |
| good / well
| | People use good as an adverb all the time when speaking, as in My car was just tuned and runs real good now or Burning the sauce stunk the kitchen up good. In writing, it is perfectly acceptable to use the adjective good with linking verbs such as be, seem, or appear: Plans for the reunion are looking good. The soup tastes good. But the use of good as an adverb with other verbs is not common in writing and will in all likelihood be frowned on by your readers. Use well instead. Thus you should say The dress fits well and looks good. | 4 |
| Be careful when using good and well after the verb feel. While both of these adjectives can mean “healthy,” your readers will probably interpret She feels good to mean “She is in good spirits.” If they see She feels well, they may assume the reference is to her state of health, not to her mood. | 5 |
| More at
bad and
well. | 6 |
got / gotten
| | “There is no such word as gotten,” an irritated reader recently wrote to The Boston Globe Magazine, objecting to the use of the word by a usage commentator, who should have known better. The notion that gotten is illegitimate has been around for over 200 years and refuses to die. The word itself is much older than the criticism against it. As past participles of get, both got and gotten go back to the Middle Ages. In American English, have got is chiefly an intensive form of have in its senses of possession and obligation and can only be used in the present tense. Gotten sees regular use as a variant past participle of get. It can occur in a variety of past and perfect tenses: Had she gotten the car when you saw her? I would not have gotten sick if I had stayed home. In Britain, gotten has mostly fallen out of use. | 7 |
| There are subtle distinctions in meaning between the two forms. Got often implies current possession, where gotten usually suggests the process of | 8 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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