A modest resolution

Let's get this right today, so that we don't have to bother with it for the rest of 2015. We can dispense with "not-a-word" talk and calling things "wrong" because of stylebook preferences.

Recently on Twitter, literary agent Janet Reid (@Janet_Reid) tweeted, "'impactful' is NOT a word. Why isn't my snotty spell-czech saying so??"

I replied, "Yes, it is. It just happens to be a word you dislike."

Her response: "wait, NO! say it ain't so. You're my favorite word wrangler, how can this be???"

Impactful has a conventional spelling. It has a pronunciation. And since you bloody well understand it, it has a meaning. Thus it is a word. This is beyond dispute.

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What is up for grabs is whether you want to use it. You may dislike it, and because you are a free-born native speaker of English, you are entitled to dislike it and shun it, purging it from your speech and writing. You are also entitled to your private judgments about people who do use it. If, to you, the use of impactful indicates the presence of a fatuous gasbag, your opinions are your own, and I will not attempt to wrest them from you. (On these two counts, actually, I am in agreement. I don't use impactful myself, except for illustrative purposes, as in this post, and I allow myself a private sneer when other people use it.)

But, as I have said here before, and doubtless will again, you do not get to legislate your personal aesthetic preferences.

Neither do you get to transform a stylebook’s entries into the criminal code.

Also recently on Twitter, Sue Burzynski Bullard (@S Burzynski Bullard), journalism professor and worthy colleague in the American Copy Editors Society, tweeted, "I'd like to wish you a merry Christmas. (Yes, merry is lowercase). And never use Xmas. It's just wrong."

I responded that no, it's not wrong, just an abbreviation. And she responded that the Associated Press Stylebook decrees that Christmas is never to be abbreviated and her students are expected to follow AP.

I follow AP style at work, most of the time, but not over a cliff. Xmas can be called "wrong" in the sense that "the Associated Press, in a stylebook that is one of many in circulation, prefers not to use the abbreviation Xmas in journalistic writing for publication." (To be fair, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage states the same preference.)

That falls somewhat short of being a sin against the Holy Ghost. For that matter, it also falls well short of the common sense of what a "wrong word is," such as using their for they're or grizzly for grisly. I understand, from depressing experience, how difficult it is to get students to grasp the manifold subtleties of AP style, but I have also witnessed the hazard that, once grasped, AP's preferences tend to be held up as the Only True Way.

So, finally, what to take into the coming year: Resolved: To refrain from insisting that a word in common use in "not a word" merely because it does not appeal, and to refrain from elevating any stylebook's preferences into universals.

A modest resolution

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