of a similar character which have come to my attention and which have been called to my notice by interested users of the book is very large. I should like to have included another twenty or thirty in this edition, but in such a matter I am, of course, bound by the inexorable limits of what publishers can afford to print and what students have the time to read. In the hope that some teachers and students may care to go further in their consideration of the various questions raised in the text, I have added at the end a bibliography with notes indicating the bearing of the various titles on the argument of the book. Outside material of this character I have found especially useful in my own teaching as furnishing subjects for students' themes. I have acknowledged in the previous edition my obligations to a number of persons by whose suggestions I have profited. To these acknowledgments must be added an expression of my very great debt for suggestions for this edition from Mr. Winward Prescott and Mr. W. A. Crosby, who were my associates in the teaching of a course, of the type implied in this volume, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My obligations to various individuals and publishing houses for allowing me the use of copyrighted material are acknowledged in footnotes to the text. SWARTHMORE, Pa. F. A. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION Although I must take the responsibility for the idea and plan of this collection, my obligations to different men for help and suggestions are numerous. Among practical engineers, teachers of engineering subjects, and teachers of English in engineering schools alike I have found the most intense interest in the subject of English for technical students, for the double end of helping them to express themselves better in writing and speaking and of broadening their outlook on life two aims which, in my opinion, can best be realized together. I have not hesitated to adopt ideas wherever I could find them and it is impossible for me in many cases to give credit where it is due. I must, however, take this opportunity to acknowledge my obligations to Professors Comfort A. Adams, Dugald C. Jackson and A. E. Norton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Farley Osgood and Mr. William Vanderpoel of the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, and, in still greater degree, to Dr. C. R. Mann of the Carnegie Foundation and to Professor H. G. Pearson of the English Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose advice and help on a hundred points have been of the greatest value. To Mr. W. A. Crosby and Mr. Percy Marks of the English Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology my thanks are due for assistance with proofs. My obligations to various individuals and publishing houses for allowing me the use of copyrighted material are acknowledged in footnotes to the text. F. A. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., 1917. |