How to Speak and Write Correctly

Joseph Devlin was the author of How to Speak and Write Correctly, a manual published in 1910. Little is recorded about him, and the book belongs to a large family of self-help guides that flourished in the early twentieth century, when many readers wanted to improve their speech and writing as a way of getting on in the world.

The book covers a wide field. It begins with the qualities of good speech and then moves through grammar, the choice and use of words, punctuation, figures of speech and the practical art of letter writing. Like other works of its type, it combines rules with examples and warnings against common errors. Some of its recommendations reflect the tastes and prejudices of its day, and linguists would now describe many of its rules differently, but it remains a revealing picture of what was considered educated English at that time.

The recording contains sixteen chapters, ranging from the sentence and figures of speech to slang, writing for newspapers and, at the close, the masters and masterpieces of literature. It lasts about five hours and forty minutes. It is shared among a team of LibriVox volunteers, among them Andrew Lebrun, David Barnes and Ophelia Darcy. The shifting voices give the text a lively air. Listeners who enjoy language, whether as a hobby or as a profession, will find plenty to smile at and to think about, and the book is also a handy reminder that rules of usage change over time.