At the ‘English Usage (Guides) Symposium’, Cambridge 2014, I was
invited to account for my revision of Plain Words
(Gowers, 2014), the style guide originally written by my
great-grandfather, Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966). And because, by
the time I gave that talk (see Gowers, 2018), I was already writing
my own book on the English language, intended as a sort of adjunct
to Plain Words, the arguments aired at that
Cambridge gathering were particularly interesting to me. That said,
they also left me more daunted than ever by my own project.