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Linguistic Simplicity. If the same idea can be expressed in a simple way or in a complex way, the simple way is better—and, paradoxically, it will typically lead readers to conclude that the writer is smarter.
Readers’ Reactions. Generally, writing is good if readers find it easy to follow; writing is bad if readers find it hard to follow.
Tightness. Omitting needless words is important. As long as it's accurate, the briefest way of phrasing an idea is usually best because the brevity enhances speed, clarity, and impact.
For the pure descriptivist, it's impermissible to say that one form of language is any better than another: as long as a native speaker says it, it's okay—and anyone who takes a contrary stand is a dunderhead. That has become something of a dogma among professional linguists.
Essentially, descriptivists and prescriptivists are approaching different problems. Descriptivists want to record language as it's actually used, and they perform a useful function—though their audience is generally limited to those willing to pore through vast tomes of dry-as-dust research. Prescriptivists—not all of them, perhaps, but enlightened ones—want to figure out the most effective uses of language, both grammatically and rhetorically. Their editorial advice should accord with the predominant practices of the best writers and editors.
English usage is so challenging that even experienced writers need guidance now and then.
I don't shy away from making judgments. I can't imagine that most readers would want me to. Linguists don't like it, of course, because judgment involves subjectivity. It isn't scientific. But rhetoric and usage, in the view of most professional writers, aren't scientific endeavors. You don't want dispassionate descriptions; you want sound guidance. And that requires judgment.
Scientific philologists will often argue that phonetic decay is a natural process, which has always been at work, and has actually produced the very forms of speech that we value most highly; and that it is therefore a squeamish pedantry to quarrel with it at any particular stage, or to wish to interfere with it, or even to speak of decay or corruption of language, for that these very terms beg the question, and are only the particular prejudice of particular persons at a particular time. But this scientific reasoning is aesthetic nonsense. It is absurd to pretend that no results of natural
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[I]t is no fancy to see a beauty in human speech, and to prefer one [form of] language to another on account of such beauty, and to distinguish the qualities that make the beauty. Learning that forbids such an attitude is contemptible.
Prescribers seek to guide users of a language—including native speakers—on how to handle words as effectively as possible. Describers seek to discover the facts of how native speakers actually use their language.
many describers also dogmatically oppose value judgments about language. That in itself is a value judgment—and a very odd one, in the eyes of ordinary people.
If it's really a matter of complete indifference to them, why don't they occasionally flout (or should that be flaunt?) the rules of grammar and usage? Their writing could militate (or is it mitigate?) in favor of linguistic mutations if they would allow themselves to be unconscious (unconscionable?) in their use (usage?) of words, as they seemingly want everyone else to be.
Sir Ernest Gowers summed up as having five bases: “first the careful choice of precise words, second the avoidance of all affectations, third the orderly and coherent arrangement of words, fourth the strict observance of what is for the time being established idiom, and fifth the systematization of spelling and pronunciation.
They encourage precision and discourage letting one word usurp another's meaning (infer–imply, lay–lie, like–as). They dislike the indiscriminate use of two forms, especially opposed forms, for one meaning (categorically–uncategorically, couldn't care less–could care less, regardless–irregardless). They value consistency and historical continuity (preferring home in over hone in, just deserts over just desserts, and slough off over sluff off).
So much for the describers’ misplaced scientism: it can lead to astounding instances of muddled thought.
Most of us have five basic registers: (1) intimate, for conversations between family members and close friends; (2) casual, for everyday conversations; (3) consultative, for communicating with colleagues and strangers in conducting everyday business; (4) formal, for published essays and serious lectures; and (5) frozen, for religious and legal rituals.
To educate people about the conventions of writing is good for them. Why? Because writing well requires disciplined thinking. Learning to write is a part of anyone's education.
“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard.
Vague intelligibility isn't the touchstone; precision is.
There are legitimate objections to the slippage based not just on widespread confusion but also on imprecision of thought, on the spread of linguistic uncertainty, on the etymological disembodiment of words, and on decaying standards generally.
(“Nobody has ever found that writing comes easy, that it ‘flowed’ from the pen. Writing is always difficult, and the more difficult it is, the better it turns out in the end.
Approaching a finish would mean recognizing that intelligibility is only part of the goal—perhaps the first part, but only a part. Another part is credibility. If students are to profit from their education, they need to acquire knowledge. For as the truism goes, knowledge is power. But power depends on having credibility with others.
Believe it or not, we can blame this change on Bugs Bunny, the cartoon character created in the 1940s. He is so popular that TV Guide in 2002 named him the “greatest cartoon character of all time.” Bugs is best known for his catchphrase “What's Up, Doc?” But for one of his chief antagonists, the inept hunter Elmer Fudd, Bugs would chide, “What a moron! [pronounced like maroon] What a nimrod! [pronounced with a pause like two words, nim rod].” So for an entire generation raised on these cartoons, the word took on the sense of ineptitude—and therefore what was originally a good joke got ruined.
By some accounts, abstractitis leads to far worse things. “If concepts are not clear,” wrote Confucius, “words do not fit.” And consequences follow: “If words do not fit, the day's work cannot be accomplished, morals and art do not flourish. If morals and art do not flourish, punishments are not just. If punishments are not just, the people do not know where to put hand or foot.” Confucius, Analects 13.3. When we descend into abstractitis, more than just our language is afflicted.
As of now is a barbarism which only a love of illiteracy for its own sake can explain.
Winston Churchill's witticism about the absurdity of this bugaboo should have laid it to rest. When someone once upbraided him for ending a sentence with a preposition, he rejoined, “That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.
(One makes comments on a thing or about a person. One makes criticism of a person or a thing. But here the writer confounded the two phrases.)
