Introduction : popular and scholarly views of "good English" -- Early British views : from Dean Swift and Dr. Johnson to a famous chemist -- Early American grammarians : Webster and his rivals and successors -- Pioneer linguists and amateur philologians : 1786-1875 -- Scholarly views and systematic surveys of usage in America : 1875-1952 -- Science, nonsense, and Webster's Third : the storm breaks -- Different dictionaries, different linguists : a rival lexicon and a new linguistics -- The empirical study of attitudes toward language and correctness -- Epilogue : whose is the right to say what's right?
