foreword » forward
Spotted in the wild:
- “WritersDigest.com - The home of Writer’s Digest Magazine … Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life … edited by Barnaby Conrad with a forward by Monte Schulz” (link)
- “Berkeley: The New Student Revolt, Book’s Forward by Hal Draper from the Free Speech Movement Archives Web site.” (link)
- “Or, as the author says so eloquently in the forward to the book, …” (link)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Carl Hart, 26 February 2005 (link)
- Johannes Fabian (p.c., 17 April 2006)
The first cite is the one given by Hart; it’s from the Writer’s Digest website, where “forward” seems to be used pretty consistently. Fabian noticed an occurrence in the New York Times (not given here).
The analysis of “foreword” is probably opaque to most modern speakers, so there is a real temptation to treat occurrences of it as occurrences of its homophone “forward”. After all, a foreword comes forward of, in front of, the body of the book.
[Added 14 April 2009: this one seems to be very common. Using data unearthed by Eugene Volokh, Victor Steinbok calculates that 9% of the law review articles between 2000 and 2009 that have a foreword list it as “forward”.]
1
Commentary by Rich , 2006/05/02 at 7:38 pm
Interesting. I’ve seen this one so many times that I’d come to the conclusion that “forward” is the actual American English equivalent of “foreword”. (I wish I could remember which American publications I’d seen it in!) I’m happy to know that it’s not actually another difference between us and them.
2
Commentary by Arnold Zwicky , 2006/05/02 at 8:42 pm
Rich’s comment sent me to two recent American dictionaries, the American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.) and the New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd ed.), to reassure myself that they did not list a noun “forward” meaning ‘foreword’. But if it’s spreading as fast as it seems to be, it might be coming soon to a dictionary near you.
3
Commentary by Martin Gradwell , 2006/05/06 at 5:22 am
In the book “The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)”, by Jack M. Bickham, there is a “Forward” which begins
‘The preliminary section of a book is often labelled a “foreword”, but in a book involving fiction techniques the word ought to be “forward”. Why? … To emphasize two vital points: All good fiction moves forward; All good fiction writers look ahead”.’
Is this an eggcorn? No. It is not a “spontaneous malapropism”, but a quite deliberate substitution of a homonym for the usual word. But it could be the cause of eggcorns in others, given the natural temptation for a busy writer to skim the contents, and to perhaps see the heading without digesting the explanation.
I suspect that the “Writers Digest” website usage is inspired by the “38 Mistakes” example. It would certainly be strange for a showcase of writing talent and technique to engage in “spontaneous malapropism”, and not to correct the error if it is indeed an error.
4
Commentary by Kelly , 2006/10/03 at 4:17 am
As a book editor, I see this a lot. We always try to correct it when we see it on a page. Very often, however, authors wait until the last moment to write the front matter, and forewords often don’t get included in the usual copyediting process. Even authors with 20+ books under their belt make this mistake all the time.
5
Commentary by Kelly , 2006/10/03 at 4:18 am
As a book editor, I see this a lot. We always try to correct it when we see it on a page. Very often, however, authors wait until the last moment to write the front matter, and forewords often don’t get included in the usual copyediting process. Even authors with 20+ books under their belt make this mistake all the time.
6
Commentary by Eggstatic , 2006/10/06 at 4:42 am
Considering that forewords are often written by someone other than the author, and have as their purpose to endorse the work, I think an additional semantic reanalysis might be that the writer of the foreword is forwarding the book to the readers, much as we forward emails to those we think might be interested in their contents.