An Aid to Our Readers and All Writers

We love to help our readers. If you occasionally have to write reports or summaries, if you like to be informative in your holiday letters, or if you just like to send emails that are cogent, we believe we have a great gift for you. And of course, if you write for a living, we’re here for you without question. Because we care.

Throughout history, assemblers and collators of linguistic sensibleness such as the estimable Henry Watson Fowler have combined great advice with excellent examples of sound usage. One of Fowler’s many contributions is his defining of collective nouns, such as “pride of lions,” or “flock of sheep”—“pride” and “flock” being the collective nouns in these cases.

A lot of people who only read Fowler superficially complain mistakenly that he’s a blockheaded prescriptionist, but he is much more sophisticated than that, and he knew that languages evolve, and societies, too.

Having just the right term for something can reveal the inherent truth inside that something. We at Stoneslide have teamed up with downsized lexicographers from American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary in order to find the deep truth within the following occupations and affiliations. We’ve created these helpful expressions for you.