Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

by Benjamin Dreyer

How and why do these changes occur? I’ll let you in on a little secret: Because you make them happen. Yes, you, right there. You grow impatient with the looks of, say, “rest room” (“I mean, it’s not a room you rest in, is it?”), so you stick a hyphen in it, coexist with “rest-room” for about twenty minutes, then quickly tire of the hyphen and, boom, “restroom.” Multiply this times hundreds of compounds, and watch the language whoosh into the future before your very eyes. Then watch the dictionary keep up with you, because that’s how it works. As a lexicographer friend once confided over sushi, the dictionary takes its cues from use: If writers don’t change things, the dictionary doesn’t change things. If you want your best-seller to be a bestseller, you have to help make that happen. If you want to play videogames rather than video games, go for it. I hope that makes you feel powerful. It should.

I don’t want to talk about how emotional this passage made me but I will.

Rather than cut and paste this paragraph from some handy online source, I typed it out, because doing so gave me a little thrill. Once upon a time, I typed out in full Jackson’s short story “The Renegade” to see whether doing so might make me better appreciate how beautifully constructed the story was. It did. It’s an exercise you might want to try out on one of your own favorite pieces of writing, if you have the time.

This guy is a freak (complimentary).

As to people who object to supermarket express-lane signs reading “10 ITEMS OR LESS”? On the one hand, I hear you. On the other hand, get a hobby.