A Very Nice-Type Girl

wOR some time now, composition instructors have been alarmed by an 1 increase in the appearance of the -type construction exemplified in the title above. A student, writing of Philip Guedalla's crystal-pure style, observes that 'he achieves much of his variety and emphasis by different type sentences.' The instructor, thinking of Guedalla, shudders, and the red ink flows. But if the instructor turns for support to the indexes of college handbooks and grammars or to their lists of faulty usages, he may be disappointed. I have consulted in vain Perrin, Shaw, the Harbrace and Macmillan handbooks, Davidson, Foerster and Steadman, Marks and Bryan. It is interesting to speculate on the cause of this omission. Is the expression too much of a localism to be considered in a nationally used text? A. R. Dunlap reports that 'type person' (e.g., smart-type women, the type person that I dislike) was known to his informants all over the country arld concludes that the 'type person construction is current colloquially in all the larger divisions of the American speech area.'1 Is the expression, then, too new to have been caught by the textbooks? Although I have been aware of its currency for only two or three years, Mr. Dunlap's 1945 findirlgs-the widespread use of the construction at that time and the fact that one of his Western informants knew no alternative-would indicate a not too recent origin. But still, the construction is not to be found in DAE, WIencken, Curme, Jespersen, Berrey and Van den Bark, and of course not in the OED illustrations. Perhaps the expression is felt by textbook writers to need no comment because it is acceptable in formal written English. A number of English instructors, consulted informally, demurred at this possibility. Perhaps, then, it is too vulgar to occur in college writing and, therefore, to need attention in a college text. My own experience, as well as the general level of the sources for the examples in the following paragraphs, speaks against this possible explanation. Somewhat similar constructions have probably begun to occur to the reader: 'new-model radio,' 'high-class restaurant,' 'old-make car,' 'goodquality cigar,' 'London Character Shoes' (the name of a Brooklyn shoe store). That these are not at present quite the same grammatically as the

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