Indoorsman-- Everything's unique, just like everything else

I was raised a grammar and usage prescriptivist, which is sort of the grammar and usage equivalent of a colonial-era Calvinist.

It is a severe, rule-bound belief system that punishes sentence-ending prepositions with canings and public humiliation in the pillory. I actually know fellow adherents who have been forced to wear scarlet letters -- not "A" for adultery but "SI" for split infinitive.

As a result of this upbringing, I often find myself silently losing esteem for people as I note their language mistakes. It's a nasty habit, I guess, but it's not as rude as actually correcting people. I used to do that; my middle school teachers hated it.

This tendency toward language elitism, instilled in me by my well-meaning and otherwise anti-elitist father, is not at all uncommon among newspaper writers and editors. We are word people by nature and perfectionists by training. We strive not only for accuracy but for precision -- and we know the difference between them.

Each of us has his or her own pet language rules. For instance, a writer under the current Yakima Herald-Republic regime can get away with a split infinitive. But woe be unto him if he uses the word "unique" to mean anything other than one of a kind, its strictest definition. There is, therefore, no such thing as a degree of uniqueness. There is no "very unique" or "somewhat unique"; there is only "unique" or "not unique."

Adherence to these rules makes us feel important. We are guardians of the proper language. We are the select few whose standards have not slipped. And, most importantly, we're smarter than you.

That is, of course, a bunch of hogwash.

It's the sort of elitism that many of even the most strident usage and grammar Puritans would reject prima facie were it applied to another field.

So, now we get to the reason I've taken up the subject in this space: I am hereby declaring myself a usage and grammar descriptivist. I reject prescriptivism!

Descriptivism, for the uninitiated -- read: "Those who have actual lives" -- is the belief that language rules should be a reflection of how language is actually used, not something handed down from on high to be followed unquestioningly. To revisit a metaphor, if prescriptivism is linguistic Calvinism, descriptivism is Unitarianism.

It's a come-as-you-are sort of take on usage and grammar, the main tenet of which goes something like this: If a written sentence is precise and understandable, who gives a hoot whether it splits an infinitive or strays from a word's strictest definition.

As a born-again descriptivist, then, I have decided to no longer be bothered by such things. I will not judge grocery stores for labeling express lanes "15 items or less" rather than "15 items or fewer." My writing and my speech will be governed by one rule only: It must be clear.

For a guy raised a prescriptivist, that's pretty unique.

-- The Indoorsman

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