Editing The Complete Plain Words (section)

==''The Complete Plain Words'', 1954==
By 1954 both books were still selling well. Almost 300,000 copies of ''Plain Words'' and more than 130,000 of ''The ABC'' had been sold.<ref name=mgcpw>"Plain Words", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 22 September 1954, p. 6</ref> The Treasury, HMSO and Gowers agreed that the obvious and best course would be to combine the two booklets into a single volume.<ref>Scott, p. 182</ref> This Gowers did, with help from his colleagues, as before; he made many revisions as a result of "the many correspondents from all parts of the English-speaking world who have been good enough … to send me suggestions, criticisms and specimens".<ref>Gowers (1954), p. iii</ref> An example of his revisions is in the entry on "bottleneck", of which in 1951 he had written four brief sentences warning against overuse: in 1954 he felt it necessary to write 270 words, so ubiquitous had the term become.<ref name=bn>Gowers (1954), pp. 84–85</ref> {{#tag:ref|Among the more extreme uses of the word noted by Gowers in 1954 were "drastic bottleneck", the "vicious circle of interdependent bottlenecks" and the "worldwide bottleneck".<ref name=bn/> In the 2014 edition Rebecca Gowers points out that misuse of the word has not completely vanished, citing a recent use of "the single biggest bottleneck in the economy".<ref>Gowers (2014), p. 155</ref>|group= n}} (By the time of the 1973 revision the fad for the word had declined, and Fraser's entry is very much shorter.)<ref>Gowers (1973), p. 76</ref>

''The Complete Plain Words'' contained 226 pages, including seven pages of index. It was a hardback, in green cloth binding with dust-jacket, in HMSO's preferred size, used for the two earlier Plain Words books, 8.4in x 5.25in (21.3&nbsp;cm x 13.3&nbsp;cm). It was published in September 1954 at what ''The Manchester Guardian'' called the remarkably cheap price of five shillings (25p).<ref name=mgcpw/> {{#tag:ref|Using the [[Retail Price Index]], five shillings in 1954 equates to £5.62 in 2011 terms.<ref>[http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/result.php?year_source=1954&amount=0.25&year_result=2013 "Relative worth of £0 5s 0d from 1954"], MeasuringWorth, retrieved 6 April 2014</ref> The 2014 edition of ''Plain Words'' was published at £14.99.<ref>Gowers (2014), dust-jacket</ref>|group= n}} ''The Times Literary Supplement'' greeted the publication: "It may be hoped that in this more durable form the book's good influence will continue to spread: Civil Servants have not been alone in profiting from it in the past, nor should they be in the future."<ref>"Philology", ''The Times Literary Supplement'', 31 December 1954, p. 858</ref> The book has remained in print, in its original and revised editions, ever since.<ref>Gowers (2014), p. xiv</ref>

Between Gowers's prologue and epilogue there is a Digression on Legal English followed by chapters on The Elements, Correctness, Avoiding the Superfluous Word, Choosing the Familiar Word, Choosing the Precise Word, The Handling of Words, and Punctuation.<ref>Gowers (1954), pp. v and vi</ref>