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Nebraska Authors

Maurice Harley Weseen

Born 1890-12-15 Oakland, NE (USA)

Died 1941-04-14
Lincoln, NE (USA)

Buried
Oakland, NE (USA)
Oakland Cemetery

Long-time professor of English at the University of Nebraska, wrote guides to business English and contributed to reference works. He was widely quoted as an authority on usage and his obituary appeared in the New York Times. His book A Dictionary of American Slang (first edition 1934) was, however, panned by H.L. Mencken as "an extremely slipshod and even ridiculous work."

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Places Lived

Oakland, NE
Lincoln, NE
Story, IA

Author Of

  • Nonfiction

Keywords

English Language; Slang; Business English

Education

A.B., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
A.M., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Occupation

Professor of English

Places Worked

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Bibliography

Visual Writing in Tolstoy. 1917.
English Science and Enginering. 1918.
Everyday Uses of English. 1922.
How to Apply for a Position and Interview. 1927.
Crowell's Dictionary of English Grammar and Handbook of American Usage. 1928.
Words Confused and Misused. 1932.
Write Better Business Letters. 1933.

Contributor to Journal of Political Economy, Outlook, American Speech, Business, The Business Woman, Postage and the Mailbag, Boys' World, Nebraska Farmer, Omaha World-Herald, The Burroughs Clearing House, and The Coast Banker.

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Maurice Harley Weseen
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(e.g. Author is buried in Fremont, not in David City / Also wrote for the Daily Nebraskan during her time as a student)