Tag: MWDEU

February 4, 2008

How I Became a Descriptivist

Believe it or not, I wasn’t always the grammar free-love hippie that I am now. I actually used to be known as quite a grammar nazi. This was back in my early days as an editor (during my first year or two of college) when I was learning lots of rules about grammar and usage […]

Descriptivism, Editing, Prescriptivism, Usage 7 Replies to “How I Became a Descriptivist”

October 7, 2007

One Fewer Usage Error

In my mind, less and fewer illustrates quite well virtually all of the problems of prescriptivism: the codification of the opinion of some eighteenth-century writer, the disregard for well over a millennium of usage, the insistence on the utility in a superfluous distinction, and the oversimplification of the original rule leading to hypercorrection. I found […]

Usage, Words 4 Replies to “One Fewer Usage Error”

Arrant Pedantry

Tag: MWDEU

How I Became a Descriptivist

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One Fewer Usage Error

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Tag: MWDEU

How I Became a Descriptivist

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One Fewer Usage Error

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