The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup

• Newspapers have style guides that counsel their reporters in style and usage. (Not every publication relies on AP Style.) The New York Times, for instance, not only has an in-house style guide but you can buy it on Amazon or in your local bookstore. The Washington Times, with a new editor in the corner office, recently updated its style guide. Some of these updates include:

                        “Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual…”
                        “The quotation marks will come off gay marriage” 
                        “We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens”

            Welcome to the 21st century.

• Next Tuesday, March 4, is (apparently) National Grammar Day, sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Having just joined a group on Facebook called “I judge you when you use poor grammar,” which has 243,480 members, I’m kind of interested in this. Read a pretty funny story about it in the Chicago Tribune (the day's founder even dumps on Elvis Presley for singing "I'm all shook up" instead of "all shaken up"). By the way, I not only don't hate, but I don't judge others when it comes to grammar. Seriously, I'm not that kind of guy.
  

 

Comments

[Hazel]

I don't hate -- I just stop reading (unless it's a source that I HAVE to read for work such as some of the UK government press releases).

[Chris]

Well, Elvis should only ever be slagged for badly covering Ray Charles songs and getting credited as the "King" for doing so. As far as grammar in poems or lyrics is concerned, anyone with more than a dozen brain cells can realize these are not required to stick to conventions or rules.

Judging people based on grammar is something we all do in one way or another. But becoming a card carrying member of a club that focuses on this basically means you're proud to prefer form over content.

My German and Swedish grammar is far from flawless, but as long as I take the trouble of learning 4 languages other than my mother tongue and as long as I take the trouble of speaking to people in their native language with a great degree of fluency, I double-dare anyone to throw the first stone.

Of course, this is not the most compelling argument against that club. It's just that the discussion would get rather convoluted. Let's suffice it to say you'd be better off canceling that membership, the founder's argument against Elvis being a fine illustration of the reason why.