Previous posts in the Standard Dictionary of Facts series:

• HISTORY, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, BIOGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, ART, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS, INDUSTRY, INVENTION, COMMERCE, SCIENCE, NATURAL HISTORY, STATISTICS AND MISCELLANY
• The Standard Dictionary of Facts– Give it a try!

I have already read the Prefaces of both the Question Book and the Dictionary (citations below). I am a quite good user of Indexes. So, as instructed, I referred to page 867 and indeed there is a list of lists– including some that I’m sure were expected one hundred years ago, but not so today. We will get to that in a minute– or not depending on what we discover next.

This is what happens with these sorts of books. The next step of How to Study is choosing a topic “one desires to acquire more information concerning.” And we could move directly on to that, but there’s no reason we must. We can detour all over the place if we so desire!

Among the lists is one that I– as the person who puts words in Missy’s mouth– will find very useful: WORDS OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED.

There was great emphasis on being a cultured person back in the crappy olden days. We can talk about that later. For now, who the heck is Richard Grant White? That infallible source tells me he “was one of the foremost literary and musical critics of his day. He was also a prominent Shakespearean scholar, journalist, social critic, and lawyer.” This is confirmed by the inclusion of his name in the table titled AMERICAN LITERATURE (p. 304-5). White was raised believing he would receive a nicely sized inheritance. Instead, his father’s business went bankrupt, so– horror of horrors– he had to go to work for a living! Interesting and accomplished character. Lost to most, though.

Many of the mispronounced words– I’m not going to recreate the pronunciation marks– include a “not” indicating the common mispronunciation. This one cracked me up. “Acts” (a-c-t-s as we would say) not aks. Also, I think I’ve been mispronouncing “Alcott”! The entry on “government” reminds to keep the ‘n’. Dr. “Jekyll” is je-kul not jek-il. … Eight pages of, I’d say, 4-point type. Some of these are seriously subtle, and now that I think about it, I hear them all of the time, and say them, too. A lot of them concern– what’s the term? When a vowel sound in the middle of a word is omitted in spoken speech, thus often reducing the number of syllables? E.g., “several,” sev-er-al not sev-ral. OMG. Who pronounces the ‘p’ in swept? Do I? Do you?

I was thinking this was giving me a headache, turned the page one last time, and saw this.

The Standard Dictionary of Facts. Henry W. Ruoff ed. The Frontier Press Company, Buffalo, N.Y. 1914.

The Standard Question Book and Home Study Outlines. The Frontier Press Company, Buffalo, New York. 1919.