One size does not fit all

On Facebook, Peter K. Fallon responded to my guest post on dictionary fundamentalism at Merriam-Webster's A Thing About Words with this comment:

You want prescriptivism, I'll give you prescriptivism

At HeadsUp Fred Vultee writes, more in sorrow than in anger, that the Detroit Free Press not only allowed an "It's official" lead to run but repeated it in the headline. Somewhere in Michigan an editor knows no shame.

Peeving about peevers

I saw a remark the other day that the folks at Language Log are given to peeving about peevers, and it occurred to me afresh how much misunderstanding remains among evidently educated people about what linguists are up to when they expose bogus prescriptivism and peevery.

In a word: "blandishment"

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

Joke of the week: "The Honest Lawyer"

A short guide to online discourse

In disputing an article, follow these simple steps: 

The most famous umbrella since Neville Chamberlain went to Munich

The public appetite for trivial distraction has always extended to our chief executives.

Godspeed to a graduate

As I write, members of the Class of 2013 at Loyola University Maryland are receiving their diplomas, and I would like to mention one of them.

A small milestone

This would have been unthinkable when I came to The Baltimore Sun twenty-seven years ago.

From teacher's pet to insufferable prig

Being a teacher's pet as a child endeared me to no one but teachers.

Another voice for sanity

If you read about language, grammar, and usage, you're as likely to come across rubbish and codswallop as anything else.

Video joke of the week: "The Jumper"

In a word: tout

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

Why you dislike singular "they"

It's not correct.

English and thermodynamics

As a journalist, I gravitate toward the lurid.

So that's who you say I am

Yesterday I invited you to come up with a term, a label for the kind of reasonable or informed or empirical prescriptivist that I profess to be. That Bill Walsh and Jan Freeman and others demonstrably are. Here are most of your responses, culled from the comments, Facebook, Twitter, and private messages.

Who do you say I am?

Yesterday, in reviewing Bill Walsh's Yes, I Could Care Less, I remarked that Mr. Walsh's describing himself as a stickler was not the happiest choice of terms.

No one cares more

When I got my reviewer's copy of Bill Walsh's new book, Yes I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk (St. Martin's Griffin, 256 pages, $14.99), the book fell open to this passage: "You're free to talk back to your usage guides. (Funny--people don't seem to have any reservations about telling me I'm nuts about hyphenated modifiers, or. ..."

Word of the week: latitudinarian

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

Joke of the week: "The Recalled Quarters"

Three years

May 4 fell on a Tuesday in 2010. The previous weekend I had concluded my critically acclaimed portrayal of Franklin Roosevelt in the Memorial Players' production of Annie. And it was on that Tuesday afternoon that I returned to the newsroom of The Baltimore Sun after my twelve-month [cough] hiatus [cough].

Drink and the untutored young

I'm a big-tent person, you know. Live and let live, I always say. Milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein. No accounting for tastes, so let people enjoy their innocent pleasures. Life's too short, &c., &c. 

Fussy, fussy, fussy

My colleague in the mysterious East Gary Kirchherr writes of a "thread on Twitter by someone who insists on using the title 'athletics director,' because said position-holder is the director of athletics, not (necessarily) a guy who's athletic." Mr. Kirchherr describes this as "idiotic pedantry."

Respect the julep

The Kentucky Derby, arriving seasonally as the mint is springing up, provides an excellent occasion for preparing and savoring a mint julep. So I offer you my recipe again this year. Do keep in mind that the julep is not some genteel lady's drink but a serious beverage that commands respect. 

In a word: raddled

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

Joke of the week: "The Meaning of Life"

Last and past

One of the pedantic little flourishes copy editors can fall into is distorting the Associated Press Stylebook guideline that says "Avoid the use of last as a synonym for latest if it might imply finality."

Home to Wordville

One of the things I have been proudest of since starting this blog is late 2005 is that I have never written a post about having trouble writing a post. Sooner or later, every columnist or every fiction writer descends to writing about being unable to write. But last week, on days when I had nothing to say, I said nothing. I recommend the practice.