Kenneth George Wilson (

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city pro ...

, 21 April 1923 –

Mansfield, Connecticut Mansfield is a town in Tolland County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 25,892 at the 2020 census. Pequot and Mohegan people lived in this region for centuries before the arrival of English settler-immigrants in the late 17th cen ...

, 11 March 2003) was an author, professor of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and vice president at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

. His best-known work is ''The Columbia Guide to Standard American English'', published in 1993.Obituary
/ref> Through the 1970s Wilson served as UConn's vice president for academic programs or academic affairs. With the 1974 change in title, the vice presidency replaced the provost as the university's chief academic office. He had been dean of the university's College of

Liberal Arts Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the ...

and Sciences from 1966 to 1970 and head of the English department in 1965-66. "Many of his contemporaries credit Wilson with starting the process of making UConn a nationally respected university," a university press releas

and the university magazine, Advance, said at the time of his death in 2003

Wilson returned to teaching in 1981 and retired in 1989. He had joined UConn's Storrs campus faculty in 1951 as an instructor and rose to be a full professor. A graduate of

Albion College Albion College is a private liberal arts college in Albion, Michigan. The college was founded in 1835 and its undergraduate population was approximately 1,500 students in 2014. They participate in NCAA Division III and the Michigan Intercolle ...

in Albion, Mich., Wilson earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. He was a native of

Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. He is the subject of an article in ''Contemporary Authors'' (December 2007) by

Thomson Gale Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Gro ...

. When the Columbia Guide was published online by

Bartleby.com Bartleby.com was an electronic text archive, headquartered in Los Angeles (USA) and named for Herman Melville's story " Bartleby, the Scrivener". It was initiated with the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993 as a collection of classic literatu ...

in 2001, the site said of Wilson's book: "A vigorous assessment of how our language is best written and spoken and how we can use it most effectively, this guide is the ideal handbook of language etiquette: friendly, sensible, reliable, and fun to read." The electronic edition continues to be offered through licenses to libraries and other institutions. The Guide has 6,500 entries, including both descriptive and prescriptive examples. The electronic edition features 4,300 hyperlinked cross-references. In the book's introduction, Wilson called standard American English usage "linguistic good manners, sensitively and accurately matched to context — to listeners or readers, to situation, and to purpose."

Bibliography

* ''Essays on Language and Usage'' (1962) with Leonard Fellows Dean * ''Harbrace guide to dictionaries'' (1963) * ''The Play of Language: A Revision of Essays on Language and Usage'' (January 1971, September 1971, ) with Leonard Fellows Dean, and W. Walker Gibson * ''Van Winkle's Return: Change in American English, 1966-1986'' (June 1987, ) * ''The Columbia Guide to Standard American English'' (1993, May 1999, ), from 2001 to June 2009 available free of charge online at

;As Editor: * ''Models in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry'' by David W. Newman, Ph.D. (October 1987, )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Kenneth G. 1923 births 2003 deaths Albion College alumni Linguistics writers Writers from Akron, Ohio University of Michigan alumni University of Connecticut people