WORD STUDY AND ENGLISH GRAMMAR
Importance of the Subject
Word study and English grammar are important to the young printer for several reasons. In the first place, disregard of the correct use and combination of words is a distinct mark of inferiority and a serious bar to business and social advancement. A man's use of words is commonly taken as a measure of his knowledge and even of his intelligence. Carelessness in this regard often causes a man to be held in much less esteem than he really deserves.
In the second place, it is quite as important that the printer should know something about the words and sentences which he puts on paper as it is that he should know something about the paper on which he puts them, or the type, ink, and press by means of which he puts them there.
In the third place, knowledge of words and their uses is indispensable to correct proofreading which is itself a branch of the printer's craft. A working knowledge of words and their relations, that is, of rhetoric and grammar is therefore a tool and a very important tool of the printer.
This little book is not intended to be either a rhetoric or a grammar. It is only intended to review some of the simplest principles of both subjects, to point out a few of the commonest mistakes, and to show the importance to the apprentice of the careful study and constant use of some of the many books on words, their combinations, and their uses.
All the words in the English language belong to one or another of nine families, each of which family has a special duty. If you will always remember to which family a word belongs and just what that family does, you will be saved from many very common errors. These nine families are: 1, nouns; 2, adjectives; 3, articles; 4, verbs; 5, pronouns; 6, adverbs; 7, prepositions; 8, conjunctions; 9, interjections. This order of enumeration is not exactly the same as will be found in the grammars. It is used here because it indicates roughly the order of the appearance of the nine families in the logical development of language. Some forms of interjections, however, may very probably have preceded any language properly so called.