Does Prescriptivism Have Moral Worth?
I probably shouldn’t be getting into this again, but I think David Bentley Hart’s latest post on language (a follow-up to the one I last wrote about) deserves a response. You see, even though he’s no longer cloaking his peeving with the it’s-just-a-joke-but-no-seriously defense, I think he’s still cloaking his arguments in something else: spurious […]
It’s just a joke. But no, seriously.
I know I just barely posted about the rhetoric of prescriptivism, but it’s still on my mind, especially after the recent post by David Bentley Hart and the responses by response by John E. McIntyre (here and here) and Robert Lane Greene. I know things are just settling down, but my intent here is not […]
Who, That, and the Nature of Bad Rules
A couple of weeks ago the venerable John E. McIntyre blogged about a familiar prescriptive bugbear, the question of that versus who(m). It all started on the blog of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, where a Professor Jacoby, a college English professor, wrote in to share his justification for the rule, which […]
Temblor Trouble
Last week’s earthquake in northern Japan reminded me of an interesting pet peeve of a friend of mine: she hates the word temblor. Before she brought it to my attention, it had never really occurred to me to be bothered by it, but now I can’t help but notice it and be annoyed anytime there’s […]
Free Shipping on T-shirts Today
To celebrate International T-shirt Day (apparently that’s a real thing), Spreadshirt is offering free shipping today on all orders (up to $9.50 in value). Just head over to the Arrant Pedantry store and use the coupon code T-DAY2011 in the US or T-DAY2011CAD in Canada. I know it’s been unforgivably long since my last post, […]
Attributives, Possessives, and Veterans Day
As you’re probably aware, today is Veterans Day, but there’s a lot of confusion about whether it’s actually Veteran’s, Veterans’, or Veterans Day. The Department of Veterans Affairs obviously gets asked about this a lot, because it’s the top question in their FAQs: Q. Which is the correct spelling of Veterans Day? Veterans Day Veteran’s […]
Gray, Grey, and Circular Prescriptions
A few days ago John McIntyre took a whack at the Associated Press Stylebook’s penchant for flat assertions, this time regarding the spelling of gray/grey. McIntyre noted that gray certainly is more common in American English but that grey is not a misspelling. In the comments I mused that perhaps gray is only more common […]
10:30 o’clock
My sister-in-law will soon graduate from high school, and we recently got her graduation announcement in the mail. It was pretty standard stuff—a script font in metallic ink on nice paper—but one small detail caught my eye. It says the commencement exercises will take place at “ten-thirty o’clock.” As far as I can remember, I’ve […]
Would you like to take a survey?
I’m working on a research project for a class this semester, and I need volunteers to take a short survey. It involves reading three short passages and answering a few questions. It should only take about 10 minutes. The results will not be published and no identifiable personal information will be collected. If anyone is […]
Scriptivists Revisited
Before I begin: I know—it’s been a terribly, horribly, unforgivably long time since my last post. Part of it is that I’m often busy with grad school and work and family, and part of it is that I’ve been thinking an awful lot lately about prescriptivism and descriptivism and linguists and editors and don’t really […]