

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Get a grip












  1. "There are indeed rules of English grammar that writers must follow to appear educated and literate."
    I believe JMcI and EK have reached a consensus.
    Can we move on?

  2. Someone said that laws show us what we can do, as well as what we can't. Grammar rules, like laws, show us what we can do. They are reassuring. When they're abandoned, readers and writers get nervous. A grammar rule is never abandoned in a day. First there must be decades of confusion and bewilderment and argument. Final thought: a living language beats a dead one if only because a living language can adjust. Everything alive changes with the single exception of prescriptionists.

  3. Substitute the epithet "liberal" for "descriptivist" and you get a better sense of what the real complaint is.

  4. I agree, Mr. "Mencken." Unless Mr. Kefauver or "HK" (assuming they are not the same person) should come up with something different from the uninformed peeving demonstrated to date, you will not be seeing further commentary from them at this location.

  5. I liked A Clockwork Orange.

  6. the incunabula keeperApril 25, 2010 at 8:15 PM


  7. Patricia the TerseApril 26, 2010 at 1:04 AM

    In Italy, where the pronouncements of the Consiglia are routinely and happily ignored by most of the population, traffic signals are indeed seen as 'suggestions.'

  8. "A 1995 Reuter's news article put 1994 road deaths in Italy at 6,000 according to ISTAT, the National Institute of Statistics in Italy. Based on that figure, ...1994 motor vehicle injuries in Italy (were)around 550,000 with about 71,000 of thems serious." (2009

  9. I submit that we each get two votes. Looking at the long-term evolution of language, I'm a descriptivist, if only to the extent of conceding that English will outlive me. As an editor, I maintain that clear communication requires a set of conventions to be honored here and now, on the publication date of the edited work, acceptable for the moment to the writer and the audience. I'm a prescriptivist on the job and a descriptivist at home over drinks with the linguist who married me.

  10. Mike, you are a very cunning linguist!

  11. Who is this Anonymous slug who hides in statistics? Italians also ignore higher tax laws, attempts by the government to tell them not to smoke and refuse to sit on the runway for hours at a time when departure time is uncertain.