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all intents and purposes is colorless, redundant, and hackneyed. Almost any other expression would be an improvement. “He is, to all intents and purposes, king of the island” (Mail on Sunday) would be instantly made better by changing the central phrase to “in effect” or removing it altogether. If the phrase must be used at all, it can always be shorn of the last two words. “To all intents” says as much as “to all intents and purposes.”

all right. A sound case could be made for shortening all right to alright, as many informal users of English do already. Many other compounds beginning with all have been contracted without protest for centuries, among them already, almost, altogether, and even alone, which originally was all one. English, however, is a slow and fickle tongue, and alright continues to be looked on as illiterate and unacceptable, and consequently it ought never to appear in serious writing.

All Souls College, Oxford. Not Souls’.

all time. Many authorities object to this expression in constructions such as “She was almost certainly the greatest female sailor of all time” (Daily Telegraph) on the grounds that all time extends to the future as well as the past and we cannot possibly know what lies ahead. A no less pertinent consideration is that such assessments, as in the example just cited, are bound to be hopelessly subjective and therefore have no place in any measured argument. For a similar problem with futurity, see EVER.

allusion. “When the speaker happened to name Mr. Gladstone, the allusion was received with loud cheers” (cited by Fowler). The word is not, as many suppose, a more impressive synonym for reference. When you allude to something, you do not specifically mention it but leave it to the reader to deduce the subject. Thus it would be correct to write, “In an allusion to the President, he said, ‘Some people make better oil men than politicians.’ ” The word is closer in meaning to implication or suggestion.

altercation. “Three youths were injured in the altercation” (Chicago Tribune). No one suffers physical injury in an altercation. It is a heated exchange of words and nothing more.

alumnae, alumni. “Parker joined the other Wellesley alumni in a round of sustained applause from the podium” (Boston Globe). Alumni is the masculine plural for a collection of college graduates. In the context of an all-female institution, as in the example just cited, the correct word is alumnae. The singular forms are respectively alumna (feminine) and alumnus (masculine).

ambidextrous. Not -erous.

ambiguous, equivocal. Both mean vague and open to more than one interpretation. But whereas an ambiguous statement may be vague by accident or by intent, an equivocal one is calculatedly unclear.

amid, among. Among applies to things that can be separated and counted, amid to things that cannot. Rescuers might search among survivors but amid wreckage. See also BETWEEN, AMONG.

amoral, immoral. Amoral describes matters in which questions of morality do not arise or are disregarded; immoral applies to things that are evil.

Amtrak for the passenger railroad corporation. The company’s formal designation is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, but this is almost never used, even on first reference.

and. The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it.

A thornier problem is seen here: “The group has interests in Germany, Australia, Japan and intends to expand into North America next year” (Times). This is what Fowler called a bastard enumeration and Bernstein, with more delicacy, called a series out of control. The defect is that the closing clause (“intends to expand into North America next year”) does not belong to the series that precedes it. It is a separate thought. The sentence should read, “The group has interests in Germany, Australia, and Japan, and intends to expand into North America next year.” (Note that the inclusion of a comma after Japan helps to signal that the series