Jazz Is Better Than Muzak by James W. Ziskin

  Do you find that proper grammar and structure sometimes interfere with style and tone? What liberties do you take with language for the sake of style?

Oh, boy, do I love talking about language. So much so, in fact, that I’m going on a bit of a tangent before addressing this week’s question.

Here goes. First, let’s all realize that language changes. How could it not? Think of English. More than 1.5 billion people speak English. (One thousand five-hundred millions.) Of these speakers, somewhere be...