Talk:H. W. Fowler

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Biography

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Channel Islands Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Channel Islands, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Channel Islands on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Channel IslandsWikipedia:WikiProject Channel IslandsTemplate:WikiProject Channel IslandsChannel Islands-related articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Journalism Low‑importance

	Journalism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Kent Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Kent, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the county of Kent in South East England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.KentWikipedia:WikiProject KentTemplate:WikiProject KentKent-related articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Kent tasks:

Here are some Kent related tasks you can do:

Clean up an article: Here are automatically generated lists of articles needing cleanup sorted alphabetically and by category.
Edit the Top and High importance articles.
Refine/polish: Ashford, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury
Expand:: List of churches in Kent, Maidstone Borough Council
NPOV: K College
Citation needed: Unreferenced Kent articles
Cleanup/Copyedit: Kingdom of Kent
Expert attention: Channel Tunnel, Bromley Civic Society
Stubs: see Kent geography stubs articles

Note: These articles may overlap with those on other related lists. If you would like to make a change, either do so yourself, or make a suggestion.

Linguistics Low‑importance

	Linguistics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Somerset Low‑importance

	Somerset portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Somerset, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Somerset on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SomersetWikipedia:WikiProject SomersetTemplate:WikiProject SomersetSomerset articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

University of Oxford Low‑importance

	University of Oxford portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject University of Oxford, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the University of Oxford on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.University of OxfordWikipedia:WikiProject University of OxfordTemplate:WikiProject University of OxfordUniversity of Oxford articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool because one or more other projects use this class. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the `\|auto=` parameter.

Birthplace

My Cambridge Biographical Dictionary says Fowler was born in Tonbridge, Kent. Can anyone clarify? PedanticallySpeaking 15:23, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

As well as Britannica and Chambers (which I mentioned on the Reference Desk), his obituary in The Times implies Tonbridge (giving that as the home of his father). --Heron 16:37, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

MacManus (cited in the article) is unambiguous: "Here [HWF's father was teaching at Tonbridge School] their first two sons were born, Henry Watson Fowler [...] on 19 March 1858" (p. 4, 2001 ed. hardback). She gives no source for this information, so there is no PROOF of the birthplace; but schoolteachers even now commonly live in the town where their schools are. And in the nineteenth century 'public' school (see below), it was usual for teachers to be accommodated within the school grounds. So it is a reasonable assumption. MacAuslan 18:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Schoolteaching

I have added a note about Sedbergh School being a 'public' school, which is a specific British usage for a fee-paying school for the sons (as it was very largely in Fowler's time: Sedbergh was boys only until this centure) of the comparatively well-off . This is not just pedantry: it will help to give a clearer picture of the sort of teaching he was doing. To make tyhat more visible to readers those who may not know about the system, I have added 'Latin and Greek' to the article as among the subjects he taught. I have also deleted 'grammar' after 'English. This is because the teaching of English - which certainly included then (and ???should now) the teaching of grammar - involves far more than mere grammatics, which the unamended article implied to my reading. MacAuslan 18:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why the disambiguation notice?

Why is there a disambiguation notice here for Henry Weed Fowler (and vice versa)? Is this a relic from a time before Henry Fowler was a disambiguation page, or what? Ruakh 21:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Oxford International Dictionary of the English Language

Was this one of his works also?

No. Not his sort of thing at all. Fowler disclaimed any knowledge of American English and "by implication" (according to Burchfield) "the varieties of English spoken and written in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere". Tim riley (talk)

Picture

It would be great to find a picture to use of Fowler. There is a poor-quality photograph of a young Fowler that seems to be floating around the internet; on this page, it is sourced to "WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc." The Jenny McMorris biography has several nice photographs, but I don't think any of them would fall into the public domain. Otherwise, we'll just have to make do with book cover scans and random location pictures like the ones I added. Lesgles (talk) 18:27, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I correctly understand the Wikipedia rules one can post a single copyrighted image of the subject of an article in such circs as we have here, under the "fair use" heading. The pic you mention will probably have to do unless you have a better one from the biography. Tim riley (talk) 18:18, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's even better than that: Any photo of Fowler that was published prior to 1923 is public domain in the US and can be uploaded with the PD-US license. Also, any photo where the photographer has been dead for more than 70 years can use the PD-70 license. If the photo was published after 1923 and the photographer lived past 1939, then, as Tim notes, you can still use at least one "fair use" image, so long as you have a good "fair use summary", such as the one here: File:Coward with-cigarette-holder.jpg -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:23, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

True; my point was that for none of the pictures currently available do we know whether they satisfy either of those PD requirements. I agree about going with fair use; when I have the time, I'll scan one in from the bio. Lesgles (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that there are two photographs here, one crouching with his dog and another standing in exercise gear. No dates given unfortunately. Opencooper (talk) 11:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]