The Katharine Whitehorn experience

Grammar pedants aren't always good for the health of the language

Observer readers, it can be assumed, all care about language and grammar, but sometimes attempts to preserve the purity of our language are too much like Cecil B DeMille shooting a period film and asking a row of raddled-looking extras for "A little more virginity, please, girls." Language and its usages must evolve; there's no such thing as absolute purity. The ghost of George Seddon, my Observer guru, reproaches me if I use "like" instead of "as", but no one says "a town such as Alice", and my shudder at "Tell it like it is" – not "Tell it as it is" – is archaic. It's wrong to put an apostrophe into "its" when it's possessive – even into "their's", as a huge sign on a building in Swiss Cottage does. "The cat won't eat its fish" is right; the apostrophe stands for a missing letter, as in "because it's rotten". This may be irritating rather than important, but using "disinterested" when you mean "uninterested" removes a valuable word from the language: an uninterested judge is bored and waiting for teatime; a disinterested judge is, importantly, one who doesn't unfairly take sides. Maybe the distinction should be whether changing the grammar amounts to changing the meaning, or whether it's (correct apostrophe) just accepting a new or unfamiliar usage – or one from all the other national forms of what's still called English.

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