| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 95
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| Exceptional means “uncommon” or “extraordinary”: That student has an exceptional memory. | 1 |
fact
| | Fact has a long history in the sense “allegation of fact,” as in “This tract was distributed to thousands of American teachers, but the facts and the reasoning are wrong” (Albert Shanker). This practice has led to the introduction of the phrases true facts and real facts, as in The true facts of the case may never be known. These usages may cause qualms among critics who insist that facts can only be true, but the usages are often useful for emphasis. And that’s a true fact. | 2 |
factoid
| | Factoid is a recent coinage that may leave you wondering what is real and what is not. The -oid suffix normally imparts the meaning “resembling, having the appearance of” to the words it attaches to. Thus the anthropoid apes are the apes that are most like humans (from Greek anthropos, “human being"). In some words the -oid suffix has a slightly extended meaning—"having characteristics of, but not the same as.” Science fiction fans will recognize a humanoid as a being that has human characteristics but is not really human. Similarly, factoid originally referred to a piece of information that has the appearance of being reliable or accurate, as from being repeated so often that people assume it is true. The word still has this meaning in standard usage. Seventy-three percent of the Usage Panel accepts it in the sentence It would be easy to condemn the book as a concession to the television age, as a McLuhanish melange of pictures and factoids which give the illusion of learning without the substance. | 3 |
| Factoid has since developed a second meaning, that of a brief, somewhat interesting fact, that might better have been called a factette. The panel has less enthusiasm for this usage, however, perhaps because they see it as confusing. Only 43 percent of the panel accepts it in Each issue of the magazine begins with a list of factoids, like how many pounds of hamburger were consumed in Texas last month. Many panelists prefer terms such as statistics, trivia, useless facts, and just plain facts in this sentence. | 4 |
farther / further
| | Is it the further you get in your trip, the farther you get in your book or the other way around? Many writers since the Middle English period have used farther and further interchangeably. A relatively recent rule, however, states that farther should be reserved for physical distance and further for nonphysical, metaphorical advancement. Thus 74 percent of the Usage Panel prefers farther in the sentence If you are planning to drive any farther than Ukiah, you’d better carry chains, whereas 64 percent prefers further in the sentence We won’t be able to answer these questions until we are further along in our research. In many cases, however, it is hard to see the difference. If we speak of a statement that is far from the truth, for example, we should also allow the use of farther in a sentence such as Nothing could be farther from the truth. But Nothing could be further from the truth is so common that it has become a fixed expression. | 5 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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