1 Questions like these may be answered by recourse to one of the following:

• • A prescriptive reference source, e.g. a style guide, which tells you what you should say or write.

• • A descriptive reference source, such as a grammar that tells you what people do say or write.

• • A corpus (or database) of instances of what people actually have said or written.

• • A pedagogical reference source, such as a language student’s grammar, i.e. one designed to help learners with ‘rules of thumb’, and not necessarily as comprehensive as a descriptive grammar.

• • Asking other speakers of the language what they themselves say; or setting up situations in which they respond naturally.

• • Your own intuitions.

All of these – except perhaps the first – have a certain validity, although it would be dangerous, given the wide number of speakers of English, and the rate at which languages change, to make a hard and fast ‘rule’. It is probably only possible to suggest a tendency, as in the way this pedagogical grammar answers the first question (a):

When people are introduced, they usually say How do you do? (formal), Hello, or Hi (informal). Americans often say How are you? (Swan 2005)

This is how the other questions have been dealt with by various authorities on the subject:

b ‘In American phone conversations, the most frequent response is hello. If the person answering knows ahead of time to expect a call, the response may be a hi or even yeah? Self-identification responses such as Acme Computers or Dr Jones’s office more often mark the communication as business rather than personal’ (Hatch 1992). In British English, the same conventions apply, although self-identification is often preceded by a greeting: Good morning. Acme Computers.

c ‘-ise or -ize: verbs ending in -ize in American English can be written with -ise or -ize in British English. The same is true for their noun derivatives’ (Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners 2007).

d ‘The handicapped’ is now considered offensive and it is more polite to say ‘people with disabilities’ (Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners 2007). Note that such terms change with relative frequency, reflecting changes in social attitudes, and what might be acceptable now may no longer be acceptable in the near future.