| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 304. -wise |
| The suffix -wise has a long history of use to mean “in the manner or direction of,” as in clockwise, otherwise, and slantwise, and these usages are fully acceptable. Since the 1930s, however, people have used the suffix in the vaguer sense of “with relation to,” as in This has not been a good year saleswise or Taxwise, it is an unattractive arrangement. If these examples sound unremarkable, this may be because -wise has seen a lot of use in business writing and in informal speech. But the suffix has never gained respectability in more formal situations. A large majority of the Usage Panel rejected the examples cited above in one of our earlier surveys. You may save a few syllables by appending -wise to a noun, but you may thereby be injecting an unwanted note of informality into your writing. As an alternative, try paraphrases such as This has not been a good year with respect to sales and As far as taxes are concerned, it is an unattractive arrangement. | 1 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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