Listen, I love the community of people who comment here at Pandagon, each and every one. Even the ones who think I’m an asshole. Even the ones who routinely get their scalp handed to them for failing to abide the groupthink. I love you because you and your contributions make Pandagon what it is, more so even than my own contributions sometimes. And when I get testy about something and start throwing a couple elbows, it really is nothing personal. It’s how I was raised. Unfailingly polite to strangers, but comfortable with being rude to the people you love. And yes, most of the time I’m “just kidding,� but I am, as Franken says, “kidding on the square� too.
But what I love about the community here at Pandagon is the substance of the discussion in the comments. Substantive, humorous, intelligent, vicious when need be, and rarely afflicted with moral vanity. But, you know, whether I’ve put a lot of time and effort into a post, or whether I lazily just tossed one off, the last thing I want to hear about in the comments – and for completely different reasons – is anything at all about apostrophes and homonyms, and spelling from that segment of the commentosphere who play judges in the blog-olympics. “Nice transition, but you stumbled on the landing, and forgot to dot your ‘i’ – 8.7.�
And I guess you think you’re trying to help. I understand that. But do you really think I don’t know the difference between “its� and “it’s�? Do you think I was sick that day in the second grade? It’s not that I don’t know the difference. It’s that I don’t care enough to do the proof-reading to find these errors. I have to admit that, obviously. The nature of blogging is such that one’s return on excessive proof-reading diminishes fairly quickly. That’s an excuse, but not a justification I guess. But, shit, people are going to make mistakes, no matter how excessively devoted to avoiding them they are. And the people who point them out, honestly, just seem like the kind of people who just want everyone to know that they know the difference between “you’re� and “your.� The kind of person who needs everyone in the room to know how smart they are. That guy.
Or maybe they either just don’t get or refuse to accept the informal nature of much of the internet.
(Sic) Freak’s Spouse: Honey, can you pass the butter?
(Sic) Freak: Yes, I CaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA –LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA- LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA- aaaaayun. Unh. But will I? (Derek Zoolander face)
(Sic) Freak’s Spouse: Sigh. Just pass the fucking butter, asshole.
I know. I know. William Safire is spinning in his grave.
More ranting on the subject.
131 Responses to “(sic) Freaks”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Just pass the fucking butter, asshole.
For some reason I want this on a bumper sticker.
Are you trying to create a thread that will serve as “flypaper” for grammar nazis to dissect in detail what are appropriate and inappropriate ways in which one may openly flout the rules of grammar? Because if you are, I’m totally there!
See, we wouldn’t have this problem if we switched to Mayan like I always say we should. You can substitute homonyms all you want. If you want to say “sky” you can draw a picture of a snake, because the word for snake sounds just like the word for sky, and if people heard you they’d know what you were talking about, so damn it, they can figure it out in your writing too.
The real headache language is French. If I recall, a verb is conjugated I parle, you parles, he/she parlent, and they parlents. But they’re all prounounced the exact same way.
Stupid French language.
Yeah, I wrote this to show of the fact that I know a bit of french and mayan. Deal with it.
I’m with you 100%, jedmunds. I’m not gonna spend an hour proofing a post that took me ten minutes to write, just so some asshole won’t comment on my dangling participle. I have a wife for that kind of shit.
Churchill’s editor once made some remarks on his grammer and he wrote back:
“This is nonsense up with which I will not put.”
Why does Jedmunds hate English?
Actually it’s
je (I) parle
tu (you sing. or informal) parles
il/elle/on (he/she/one) parle
nous (we) parlons
vous (you pl. or formal) parlez
ils/elles (they) parlent.
Only the nous and vous forms are pronounced differently.
(”You’re such a pÄ“dant.”
“Pedant.”)
Oh, and also that’s only the verbs ending in -er. -Ir is a bit more complicated to conjugate, and -re verbs are even worse.
And the Churchill “up with which I will not put” thing has been dissected most pedantically here.
Okay, I’m annoying myself now. I’ll stop. *scurries away*
you… you… didactic pedantiphile!
whaz?
A Pang:
Fascinating: Maybe you know the source on these, though they are not strictly grammar….
Number 1:
A notoriously tightwad editor was wondering how one of his writer’s manuscripts was coming. To same money he sent a telegram that simply said “?” He got one back that said “!”
Number 2:
George Bernard Shaw and Churchill were friendly enemies.
Churchill got a letter from GBS that said, “Dear Churchill, enclosed please find two tickets to my new play. Do please come and bring a friend….if you have one.”
Churchill wrote back, “Dear Bernard, regrets. Cannot make it the first night. Will come the second night…if there is one.”
May be apochryphal but fun any way.
Brother… If you can’t be bothered to communicate clearly and efficiently, don’t expect anyone to take you seriously either.
I will just avoid your posts in the future then, if you can’t do the readers the minor courtesy of reading through your writing before posting it.
I totally sympathize with your sentiments judmends, despite my fun-pokery in the other thread. In fact, I started to learn Lojban once just because I was tired with putting up with all the idiocies in the English language. So I give you some advice: the best way to deal with pedants is to ignore them.
Now, I do have something to say to people like Teaflax. Fuck you and your “clearly and efficiently”. Minor grammar points have almost nothing to do with clarity and efficiency, as long as they’re pretty infrequent. And some people aren’t as good at proofreading their writing as others are, while they’re otherwise just as intelligent. People have different aptitudes, and some people have dyslexia in varying degrees.
More than anything, the best thing you can do to write clearly and effectively is to do a huge truckload of reading and writing, and rewriting, and commenting, and whatnot. The more the better. And if, at the end of that time, you still have less-than-perfect spelling, the difference that makes is infinitesimal. I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to care.
Stop for a moment, you pedants, and think about how arbitrary the rules of English are. The only thing spelling well, and having good grammar, directly say about you are that you are able to and have taken the time to memorize thousands of idiosyncracies that are the direct result of a long process of undirected linguistic evolution. In English’s case, there has been much less effort put into reforming and regularizing the spelling, as there has been in other languages.
The only reason good spelling is desirable is because it’s associated with having read a lot, and people who have read a lot are usually able to write better. But, duh, there’s a much better way to judge the quality of someone’s writing–by looking at the quality of their thoughts and arguments. Using spelling as a stand-in for this is wrongheaded, and one of the worst kinds of ad hominem.
Asking someone to agonize over the proofreading of their pieces so that they might be worthy enough of your attention is the height of arrogance.
“the difference that makes”
in your clarity and efficiency, that is.
And a note about proofreading. I think that in order to produce a piece of writing that flows well and is engaging, to really work out all the loose ends that really can inhibit readers’ understanding, it’s necessary to do a whole bunch of editing. That heavy editing can end up leaving some grammatical or spelling loose ends, and even that editing doesn’t guarantee a lack of simple errors. But those errors that that editing doesn’t catch aren’t important. Those are the kind of errors that pedants catch. You don’t see anyone critizing like “this sentence is too abrupt a trannsition from the previous” or things like that–substantial criticisms of the writing style. So why is it that little minor nitpicks are worth voicing? That’s not to say I’m not a little annoyed by them when I notice them, but they’re most readily forgiven. It’s the larger blunders, the more subtle indications of a poor writer, than can drive me away.
Hahaha! I totally disagree. However, my train of thought, which involved Jar Jar Binks, was lost when I came across this headline:
BTW, what provoked you to make a whole post on this? Besides my somewhat satirical note, I saw maybe three comments that wore someone hostile to your little aside?
I am so cancelling my Real Doll order!
“were somewhat”
hehehe
Good christ man, chill the fuck out.
You know how you get good at not accidentally typing you’re when you mean your, or screwing up your there, they’re, and their, or confusing it’s and its (or, god help me, putting in its’), or falling into common bloggy quasi-solecisms like ‘begging the question’ where you mean ‘raising’ the question? You try. Eventually it comes more or less automatically.
How much effort does it take to fix this? A fair among at first, and then it comes naturally. I don’t see the point of getting indignant about people’s irritation about this.
But jeezus, among my duties as a grad student just about assistant prof is teaching composition. I deal with this shit all the time. When I lean on the kids and constantly dock their grades because of bad grammar, they get better.
And, BTW, I can’t spell for shit. Reading all the time doesn’t necessarily make you a better spelling, folks.
—
Moratorium on ‘grammar nazi’ please.
What differentiates Lojban from Esperanto?
Didn’t some songwriter say, “language is a virus…from outer space”? Or was it George W. Bush?
A fair among at first
A fair amount
And commentors shouldn’t forget to goddamn preview.
To go with the Churchill/GBS anecdotes above:
Dorothy Parker’s editor sent someone around to her flat to see how her current work - way past deadline - was coming. Unable to gain admittance to the building, he stood in the street yelling up at her window that the editor insisted she come to his office immediately.
Dorothy yanked up the casement window and yelled down, “Tell him I’m too fucking busy!” and BANGed the window shut. A second later she yanked it up again. “And vice versa!” BANG.
Asked to use horticulture in a sentence, Dorothy Parker said, “You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.”
I come at this from a slightly different angle.
First off, I do accept the informal nature of much of the Internet, and so I tend not to jump on errors in grammar or spelling in anything I read here. They don’t detract from the larger points the writers are making, and the writers here are strong enough that errors are a relative rarity anyway. Furthermore, when I’m making a comment on a blog, I’m trying to think and write so quickly that I’m prone to make errors, so it seems incumbent upon me to be forgiving of others’ similar mistakes. I’d say, therefore, that you pretty much have the right of it here.
I will also say that a significant part of what I currently do for a living involves evaluating others’ writing, and when one sees enough essays that contain any number of errors of grammar, spelling, syntax, etc., it gets pretty tiresome. The thing is, many people don’t differentiate between the various contexts in which they speak and write and they figure that how they write to their friends in an e-mail message is good enough in every other case because we all “know what they mean.” Often, though not always, this indicates a lack of precision or downright laziness that’s reflected in other aspects of the person’s thinking. Yes, language conventions are arbitrary, but they still matter, and learning how to communicate in multiple contexts is an important skill.
In sum, then, I agree with you. I just want to say that pointing out errors such as the ones you describe is not always a matter of being “that guy”.
It’s that I don’t care enough to do the proof-reading to find these errors.
I don’t mind an occasional typo. I have enough of them on my blog, and I’m a goddamn editor, fer christ’s sake. And I understand how the urgency of posting something often takes precedence over being anal over typoes and accidental homonyms. Someone points one out on my blog, I blush slightly and correct it and move on with my day.
But here’s the thing. I’ve worked with literally hundreds of writers, and I have heard the “I don’t have the time/energy/desire to fix grammatical mistakes” line from about five percent of them. And every single one of the writers that says so has had a similarly cavalier attitude toward fact-checking.
I’ve used that line as a bozo filter for about a decade now. If someone uses it, his writing (it’s always a man, for some reason) stays on the slush pile. I’ve never regretted that policy.
“And, BTW, I can’t spell for shit. Reading all the time doesn’t necessarily make you a better spelling, folks.”
That’s part of my point. There is a correlation between reading and spelling, which is why all good spellers read a lot, but not everyone has the ability to spell well. That’s part of my point.
“How much effort does it take to fix this?”
For some people, it’s more than it’s worth them. It may not be as easy for them as for others. Dyslexia, you know. The reason others’ irritation is unjustified is their solecisms, while perhaps annoying, don’t really get in the way of communication except insofar as the reader is being pedantic. If the reader were less pedantic, they probably wouldn’t even notice the error. So, really, it’s the reader’s fault at being irritated. It’s the reader’s loss if they decide to stop reading someone because of these trivial errors.
And, I think that what Chris Clarke and Linneaus are saying is that these kind of mistakes–especially when they’re made in contexts where you might not really expect them, often indicate other problems with the quality of the writing. But, guys, if the writing’s bad even aside from the grammar, then it’s bad. It’s easy enough to judge that directly.
Lojban vs. Esperanto. A quick summary. Esperanto has a vocabulary that’s mostly an amalgam of various Western European languages + Russian, I believe. Its grammar is very similar to other Romantic languages. Lojban, on the other hand, has a vocabulary where no one word is taken from a single language (except for borrowings) but each word in the base vocab is designed to sound like similar words in English, Spanish, Chinise, Hindi, and … Russian? But you can combine words from the base vocab very freely in various combinations to form “metaphors”. Its grammar is completely regular and much more structured than Esperanto. It eliminates ambiguity in parsing. (You’ll never wonder which way the speaker intended to group phrases or words together.) Words tend to have more precise meanings than in Esperanto or natural languages, but there’s also more ways to say things. The grammar, I’m told, resembles Chinese grammar more than anything.
Oh, and Lojban probably has two orders of magnitude fewer speakers, and it doesn’t presently have as much vocabulary, and fewer teaching materials (all in English–don’t expect to be able to talk to people from other cultures in Lojban in the immediate future). For more, info, you’ll have to google.
The guy doing the presentation has his fly down. The drummer is off the beat. Your date slurps her spaghetti.
That’s what “it’s” for “its” is like. We stop thinking about what you’re saying. No different than if you burped in mid-sentence.
Lots of people don’t care, obviously. For those of us who do care, it’s like you’re tone deaf with your eyes.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a grammatical note in the comments, even though I’m constantly finding and correcting misspelled words, split infinitives, run-on sentences (like this one)…. usually, the most shit I get is when some young usurper wants to play “pop-culture one-upmanship.”
“The guy doing the presentation has his fly down. The drummer is off the beat. Your date slurps her spaghetti. That’s what “it’s” for “its” is like.”
I call irrational bias.
I agree with Chris Clarke and Linnaeus.
French is an amazing language. It has two vowel sounds:”uerr” and “uhhh” and entire sentences can pass with out a single complete word — just parts of words and a truckload of apostrophes. And amazingly the French can still communicate. The French are amazing people.
Magis, when I read that anecdote in the Guinness Book of World Records (early 90’s), it was Victor Hugo writing “?”, asking about the sales of Les Mis. “!” because it was selling unbelievably fast. If it’s not apocryphal, it was a telegram, not a letter. (See here.)
Er, sorry for the hijack. (I think Chris Clarke and Linnaeus are right about the grammar thing, for the record.)
i dunno about those guys, but answering a “?” with a “!” or a “?!” is an amusing game to play in IM.
Well, this settles the question of whether or not I edit the other bloggers. Yes, people ask. Why, I don’t know.
J, my solution has been to be an unabashed redneck and to take advantage of the soft bigotry of low expectations. If the President can do it, so can I.
I’d like to take this opportunity to compliment the posters at Pandagon for posting on topic right out of the gate. As much as I love Atrios, I can hardly stand to read the comments there anymore. I believe it takes an average of 5 posts before you read a comment related to the subject.
It’s usually like this:
Post 1: Frist!!!
Post 2: Second!
Post 3: FUCK BUSH!
Post 4: FUCK CHENEY!
Post 5: FUCK BUSH AND CHENEY!!
I really want to thank the Pandagon community for not doing that.
Very few things irritate me more, when having a discussion in comments on a blog, or by e-mail in a mailing list, to have the discussion picked apart by people who want to critique one contributor’s spelling or grammar, especially when they pick on obvious typos that do not detract from the sense of what is being said. When people are typing fast and responding quickly, mistakes will be made, and silent allowance should be made for those mistakes.
Hopelessly bad spelling or writing is another matter - but even that, I think, is better just ignored altogether, substance and misspelling and all, if it’s genuinely hard to understand.
Writing blog posts, though, is generally not done in such a hurry that the writer cannot afford time to check and proofread… so while I do think it’s annoying to have discussion interrupted by proofing comments, I also think it’s annoying if the blogger doesn’t bother to proofread their own post themselves.
Karl: Don’t feel bad about your comment. All comments complaining about spelling and/or grammar mistakes of the original author will, themselves, inevitably have spelling and/or grmmar mistakes in them. It’s a rule.
On proofreading: one of my teachers once said, “If you can’t be bothered to read your paper, neither can I.”
As I said, my hierarchy of acceptability when it comes to language “errors” in blog posts:
splitting infinitives, dangling participles, ignoring the subjunctive — totally ok. Acceptable even to proudly tell the grammar nazis to “suck it.”
typos — everyone makes ‘em. Correct them if you find them, but if you don’t, nothing to worry about
mixing up your/you’re, its/it’s, there/their/they’re, “for all intensive purposes”, “Grammar Nazi’s”, poor spelling not due to typos — No excuse. Please don’t do this, as it’s abusive of the English language and is just a flaunting of one’s ignorance. As Karl said, you can fix these things if you spend time learning them. If you have a blog, you’re exposing your writing to the masses. Learn to write.
Most of the bloggers I read are quite good writers, stylistically– they’re clear and succinct. However, some of the commenters on Political Animal are bordering on the incoherent. It’s not about grammar or spelling; they simply can’t write clearly and instead try to sound intellectual and instead write like a wannabe “serious” columnist in a college newspaper.
Yeah, I’m with Chris Clarke on this.
I’ll let an occasional error pass (and Lord knows I commit them myself) but if I see multiple or habitual misuses of it’s/its, they’re/their/there, etc. it just makes me think, hey, if this person can’t master the English language, why am I listening to his opinion on something more complicated?
Sorry if this makes me a grammar snob, but attacks on the “rediculous hipocracy” of the Bush administration seem a little more forceful when those words are actually spelled correctly.
english isn’t always the first language of all those blog-commenting.
and the preacher say, “rock on, pandagon!”
…
On reflection, I should say that I think pointing out typos in comments is lame. When I’ve felt compelled to do so, I generally use email. If your goal is truly to be helpful, that’s the much more efficient and effective way to do it.
Grammar Nazis are more like real Nazis than they realize, since there’s no such thing as “correct” grammar (at least not in the way they mean it - i.e., I’m not talking about any universal grammer, I’m talking about it’s-its).
“Correct” grammar = dialect of wealthy white people. That’s a fact, jack. The dialect of inner-city African-Americans is just as ‘correct’ as Bill Safire’s is. Language is a very convenient way of keeping out the riff-raff.
FUCK BUSH!! FUCK CHENEY!! FUCK JUDY MILLER!!
“Correct” grammar = dialect of wealthy white people. That’s a fact, jack. The dialect of inner-city African-Americans is just as ‘correct’ as Bill Safire’s is. Language is a very convenient way of keeping out the riff-raff.
No, it’s not. “Correct” grammar is simply correct.
As much as it pains me to side with Bill Safire on anything, his version of the English language is proper. (Proper to the point of being anal retentive, but proper nonetheless.)
If we’re going to communicate effectively with one another, we need to share a common language with common rules. It’s as simple as that. I’m sorry if that seems like a tool of oppression being used by The Man to keep you down, but that’s the way it is.
OK, point taken. But I have to say I greatly enjoy correcting the grammar of trolls. It makes me feel smarter than they are. Well, more smarter, to be precise, but you get the idea.
pdf23ds: why did I write it? Nothing recently provoked, just a couple months of things getting slightly under my skin.
I said this at Blue Girl’s too. Everyone notices and is annoyed by these things when they see them. NOT Everyone feels the need to point them out. There you are.
Also, grammar is totally classist, Ottoman. I can’t use it as an excuse so I won’t. But grammar is nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others talk.
“Correct” grammar = dialect of wealthy white people. … The dialect of inner-city African-Americans is just as ‘correct’ as Bill Safire’s is. Language is a very convenient way of keeping out the riff-raff.
African American Standard English is a legitimate and thriving dialect of English, with its own grammar and . Many people, Safire included, betray their ignorance when they ignore this fact.
Equating African American Standard English with people making mistakes when they write, however, is completely off the fucking wall.
with its own grammar and .
Grammar and spelling.
Does correcxting my own mistake make me a Nazi?
For some people, it’s more than it’s worth them. It may not be as easy for them as for others. Dyslexia, you know.
Sorry. This isn’t the case here. If someone says up front, “Look, I’m dyslexic, so please ignore any typos, etc.,” that’s one thing. But to just not bother to get it right on a post and then get the vapors when people get irritated at common and glaring errors is quite another.
Posts can be edited, as well.
i think the point was, there’s no inherent virtue to grammar or to freezing language, and that historically those with the money to go to schools and learn grammar have looked upon those without.
*looked down on those without.
zuzu, how?
speaking of which, the internet imposes some grammar of its own. for instance, i’m feeling very mellow and thus i am typing in lowercase..
Aargh. Correcxtions always have extra typos.
Also, grammar is totally classist, Ottoman… grammar is nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others talk.
That is quite likely the most condescending statement I have read here, ever. And I’m including J. Pinhead Dipshit’s comments.
Also, grammar is totally classist, Ottoman.
Oh, please. What’s classist is insisting that it’s somehow beyond the abilities of poor people to speak the English language correctly. Half of my extended family are farmers, the other half are working class. And they all manage to speak and write English properly.
Jed:
“grammar is nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others talk”
Um, no. Grammar is what makes words into language.
Yes, grammar-nitpicking serves an elitist function. But attention to grammar is also about attention to clarity of expression.
If someone uses “their” in place of “there,” it’s usually just annoying, but you don’t have to go very far down the road of sentence fragments and subject-verb disagreement before meaning starts to get lost.
zuzu, how?
How what? If you’re referring to the “looked down on those without” quote you pulled, it’s not mine.
Chris, perhaps you should quit while you’re ahead on the corrections.
Ottoman, you have some weird ideas about class. Are you saying that the “others” are incapable of learning correct grammar? That would be a surprise to many people I know. Some of whom, you may be interested to know, know the difference between standard English and dialect and when to use each.
Seriously, if you think proper grammar is classist, what else falls into that category? The “rules” of addition and subtraction? The oppression of the multiplication tables? The strict tyranny of the periodic table of the elements?
(How) can you edit a post?
Ottoman, you have some weird ideas about class. Are you saying that the “others” are incapable of learning correct grammar?
No. That’s precisely the opposite of what I’m saying.
The assertion that it’s classist to point out incorrect grammar seems like a condescending claim that those poor people are just too stupid to figure it out.
You have to be one of the bloggers, Sandals.
They post posts. We post comments.
Sorry, Ottoman — it’s not you who has the weird ideas about class, it’s jedmunds. That’s what I get for watching TV while commenting.
I hereby bestow the Medal of Freedom on Otto Man for valiant actions taken during the War on Straw.
Chris, perhaps you should quit while you’re ahead on the corrections.
You betxchka.
Sorry, Ottoman — it’s not you who has the weird ideas about class, it’s jedmunds. That’s what I get for watching TV while commenting.
Thanks. I thought that was an odd take on what I’d said.
I hereby bestow the Medal of Freedom on Otto Man for valiant actions taken during the War on Straw.
What exactly is the straw man here? I was told I was being “classist” for insisting that we’re all capable of speaking the English language correctly.
I hereby bestow the Medal of Freedom on Otto Man for valiant actions taken during the War on Straw.
Okay, so how would YOU interpret “grammar is nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others talk”?
There’s a legitimate reason to cringe when we see spelling/grammar mistakes. It’s the fact that much of spelling and grammar is often arbitrary, and there’s no reason why we do something a particular way other than convention. This means that we often learn what’s correct by repetition, and not by applying logic. The threat of reading misspelled/ungrammatical text is that we’ll be more likely to make mistakes ourselves. Over time this would be bad for everyone. Even though language choices are arbitrary, it’s enormously helpful that we all make the same arbitrary choices (unless it’s a matter of expanding our range of expression, or whatever).
Of course, it’s still lame to correct grammar or spelling in a comment, but I don’t think it’s right just to give the middle finger to the whole idea of writing correctly.
Otto, what standard are you using to judge whether a given use of language is “correct” or not? Who decides what’s correct? Do you think there’s something intrinsically correct about not splitting your infinitives or whatever? THat’s just SToopiD.
You just keep saying the same thing over and over again, never providing an argument.
Or is this an argument?
If we’re going to communicate effectively with one another, we need to share a common language with common rules.
Yeah, no shit. That doesn’t mean that any specific language is the ‘right’ one.
there’s no inherent virtue to grammar or to freezing language
One of the inherent virtues is that following certain strict rules of grammar can ensure that the meaning of a sentence is unambiguous (things like subject/verb agreement and the use of the subjunctive fall into this category). The other function and virtue of insisting on learning grammar rules is that it makes it easier for the current generation to read the literature of the previous generation. It’s less classist for everyone to use a set of standard language forms than it is for one form of language to be the “elite language” and the other accepted language to be that of the “masses.”
Classist conventions are those which are by and large inaccessible to the masses and lorded over the masses to remind them how vulgar they are. However, correct English grammar is something which is accessible to anyone who wishes to learn it, much like any sort of literacy. That’s pretty democratic, if you ask me. By contrast, I don’t see people saying, “literacy is nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others can’t read.”
First, I realize the pointlessness of arguing about grammar rules with someone named “Dadahead.”
But if you do agree that we all need to share a common language with common rules, then, just for practicality’s sake, how about if we use the standard English language that’s taught in every grade school across America? That seems to be an easy route, right?
I don’t think there’s anything “intrinsically correct” about not splitting an infinitive — now, there’s a straw man for you — but either we all stick to the same script, or we just start pounding the keyboard like monkeys and wonder why no one understands our own personal language when it’s just as clear as Jodie Foster in “Nell.”
I should add that I don’t like correcting people’s grammar or syntax in a blog post either, but I think it’s a lazy cop out to insist that all grammar, spelling, etc. is equal and to insist otherwise is somehow an act of bigotry.
Again, if you think that grammar is “nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others talk,” then I have to assume you think the multiplication tables are nothing more than the privileged classes looking down at how the others do math.
Well said, Constantine.
“Equating African American Standard English with people making mistakes when they write, however, is completely off the fucking wall.”
Not really. The point was that the standards of correctness are abitrary anyway. A ‘mistake’ is only a mistake if you didn’t mean to do it, so Jedmunds could just decide that he was going to use “it’s” instead of “its” (which makes more sense anyway) and no one could tell him he’s wrong, though they could point out that he is doing it differently than most people.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a relativist w.r.t. things like ethics, etc. But the rules of grammar (again, the random ones, not the ‘deep grammar’ ones - which are really what allow us to communicate, not Safire nonsense) are like the rules of baseball. Fixed w/in the game, but not everybody plays the same game. In the AL, they use a DH.
“Seriously, if you think proper grammar is classist, what else falls into that category? The “rules” of addition and subtraction? The oppression of the multiplication tables? The strict tyranny of the periodic table of the elements?”
This question perfectly illustrates what’s wrong with you’re view. The periodic table is correct because it corresponds to properties of the natural world. Rules of math are trickier; a lot of philosophers think they’re nothing but convention also, though I stop short of that. But they have to either be conventional or else you have to adopt some kind of mathematical realism.
But NO ONE is a ‘grammar realist’ who thinks that grammatical rules actually correspond to objective norms (again, unless we’re talking UG). I mean, really, just think about it for a minute or two and you’ll see that what you’re saying makes no sense.
(Yes, that was on purpose.)
To those who say we all need to stick to one language, do you mean everybody in the world? Should we do away with all languages but one? And who gets to pick, anyway? Why is the one language that should be preserved always the one that JUST HAPPENS to be that of the privileged classes?
Hmmmmmmm.
Who wrote the “rules” of grammar and for what purpose? What does stigmatizing certain uses accomplish?
There’s some obtuseness here I’m reluctant to label as deliberate, but it’s hard not to. But I’ll afford a charity of interpretation here not being afforded myself.
But NO ONE is a ‘grammar realist’ who thinks that grammatical rules actually correspond to objective norms (again, unless we’re talking UG). I mean, really, just think about it for a minute or two and you’ll see that what you’re saying makes no sense.
I take your point about the periodic table. Fine. I’ll go with Constantine’s literacy analogy.
But I never said there’s an objective norm involved in grammar. As I just said in a post you missed, “I don’t think there’s anything “intrinsically correct” about not splitting an infinitive” or anything else.
I do think we all have to play by the same rules in our communication. I don’t think those rules were handed down by God, but we have a set in place that an overwhelming majority go by, so let’s use that.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a relativist w.r.t. things like ethics, etc. But the rules of grammar (again, the random ones, not the ‘deep grammar’ ones - which are really what allow us to communicate, not Safire nonsense) are like the rules of baseball. Fixed w/in the game, but not everybody plays the same game. In the AL, they use a DH.
Right. America is the American League, England and the Commonwealth countries are the National League. There are different rules within the language, but inside those divisions there’s a required uniformity. (To continue your metaphor, the various teams of the American League don’t get to invent rules of their own. They all abide by league rules.)
Who wrote the “rules” of grammar and for what purpose? What does stigmatizing certain uses accomplish?
The answer to both questions was well-put by Constantine. The rules were created so that everyone could understand everyone else, and the “stigma” is in place to encourage people to write in a way that everyone can understand.
But I’ll afford a charity of interpretation here not being afforded myself.
Poor punkin.
The Man wrote the rules of grammar to keep you down, obviously.
That’s not what I said now is it, luv?
You asked who wrote the rules, dincha?
Nobody wrote them. Someone — Strunk and White, the McGuffey Reader people, the AP Stylebook people — wrote them down.
But if it fuels your sense of being oppressed by grammar Nazis to think that The Man wrote them, have at. I’ll get the violins.
@Zuzu: Ah. Duh. heh.
@Otto Man:
Was referring to your post at 4:18PM.
I’m heading out for the night, but I’ll leave you with George Orwell from his essay, “The Politics of the English Language”
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.
Words matter. Language matters. And grammar matters.
You’re either with us, or you’re with the president.
Zuzu, I don’t claim oppression. And in fact, I explicitly claimed the opposite just so that no one would make comments as stupid as yours.
Dadahead made a comment upthread, conventional wisdom among theorists, that otto-man wanted to argue. The notion that systems exist wherin the rules are written to keep the privileged privileged is not a radical one for this blog.
Whoops, the third paragraph is Orwell’s too.
Grammar I get. HTML, not so much.
Shut up jedmunds, if you claim opression by liberal grammafeminazi you can make big bucks on the FOX news talk show circuit.
yes, a nitpick, but Chris, it’s African American Vernacular English.
in fact, the link you sent it to calls it AAVE, not “african american standard english.”
and I’m actually gonna come down on Dadahead’s side on this one: there is no such thing as standard english. a standard requires rules be constant, and set in stone.
So every word we use now means the same thing now as it would have 500 years ago. same way 2+2=5 back then.
langauge has a funny way of changing and evolving. what makes the particular version “correct” is that the dominant class speaks using that dialect. but that’s neither here nor there.
and zuzu, actually, someone DID make up the rules, and it’s rather frustrating, as I can’t recall his name. The idea of most of the rules of grammar, standard spelling, all his idea.
the bastard.
but don’t blame the AP people. us AP folks have those rules for us, not really anyone else. and the AP style book is mostly just a wonderful little general knowledge reference book. state capitals, lists of phobias, proper titles for various foreign dignitaries.
you know it isn’t a “standard english rulebook” when there are significant changes every year.
Yeesh! Nothin’ like the abusing the English language to get a comment thread goin’ Jedmunds!
And someone asked you what inspired your post…I was hoping the whole “hex” thing I try to do was the reason. (You know it was.)
Don’t worry — I’ve always got your back.
(I do dashes “–” a lot — not sure if that’s good or bad!
And won’t ya just take a look at that. I thought I was being really careful writing my comment — and I’ve got an extra “the” in there.
Rats!
Name one philosopher that thinks this.
There’s a whole scientific field devoted to the study of language, called Linguistics.
Let’s just say it doesn’t agree with OttoMan.
So is it wrong to think that a routine mispeller of words that sound alike accusing someone of an “Ad Homonym” attack is funny?
Just asking.
Full disclosure: I pointed this out, then got slammed for mispelling “nonsequitur”. I’ll never make that mistake again!
There’s a whole scientific field devoted to the study of language, called Linguistics.
Let’s just say it doesn’t agree with OttoMan.
Your link’s empty, so I’m not certain what you mean to say. Linguists specialize in the study of structure, syntax and (yes) grammar, among other things.
And to say that an entire field of academia agrees on anything is a wild overstatement. I’m positive we’d find linguists on both sides of the debate.
The ones who disagree with me would be the cultural studies crowd, though, so I think I’d take their disagreements as a badge of pride.
I can’t believe I’ve become a stand-in for Bill Safire. Christ, I need a shower.
Really leaving now for the night. I promise.
blue girl:
You might try “—” for a long dash if you want your posts to be more, you know…
There’s a boatload of ASCII-ISO 8859-1 characters one can use though I generally stick to the ellipsis (…) and a few others but you never know when you’ll need an umlaut for the proper spelling of Kurt Gödel. See ASCII - ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) Table with HTML Entity Names
Dang, I forgot to the the mdash: —
————(just an experiment to see if they connected end to end)
What’s funny is that I ALWAYS proof read my blog posts, and run a spell check, etc. I just can’t do otherwise; to me, it’s just sort of what I do when I write. I can’t unlearn it.
” …Rules of math are trickier; a lot of philosophers think they’re nothing but convention also…
Name one philosopher that thinks this.”
Wittgenstein, Poincare, Dummett, Quine sometimes …
Henri Poincaré?
I guess we’re talking about two different things. I doubt any philosopher would claim that the rules of Arithmetic are arbitrary. I’m guessing you are referring to either the parallel line postulate or, Gödel’s incompleteness theorum, both deriving from the work of Mathematicians, not a bunch of smelly, old, pointy-headed philosophers.
A ‘mistake’ is only a mistake if you didn’t mean to do it, so Jedmunds could just decide that he was going to use “it’s” instead of “its” (which makes more sense anyway) and no one could tell him he’s wrong, though they could point out that he is doing it differently than most people.
Fair enough Dadahead: I disagree, of course, but that’s well within the traditional “prescriptive/descriptive” battle grounds.
you know it isn’t a “standard english rulebook” when there are significant changes every year.
Karpad, this and your other points are well taken, and thanks for the correx on my own misrepresentation of AAVE. I still think equating the evolution of language and usage, and sensitivity to linguistic cultural diversity, with sloppiness is a cheap excuse for sloppiness. But yeah, there’s certainly a lot of gray area.
And correcting typos by way of complaining about them in comments is still obnoxious. I’m wholly in jedmunds’ team on that.
A ‘mistake’ is only a mistake if you didn’t mean to do it, so Jedmunds could just decide that he was going to use “it’s” instead of “its” (which makes more sense anyway) and no one could tell him he’s wrong, though they could point out that he is doing it differently than most people.
Fair enough Dadahead: I disagree, of course, but that’s well within the traditional “prescriptive/descriptive” battle grounds.
you know it isn’t a “standard english rulebook” when there are significant changes every year.
Karpad, this and your other points are well taken, and thanks for the correx on my own misrepresentation of AAVE. I still think equating the evolution of language and usage, and sensitivity to linguistic cultural diversity, with sloppiness is a cheap excuse for sloppiness. But yeah, there’s certainly a lot of gray area.
And correcting typos by way of complaining about them in comments is still obnoxious. I’m wholly in jedmunds’ team on that.
Sorry for the double post. Got a CGI error message the first time around.
Whoops. I meant to link to the wikipedia linguistics page.
Sorry if I was a bit pissy, but attitudes like Otto Man’s frustrate me to no end. I now understand how biologists feel when people argue against evolution, or how geologists feel when people claim the earth is young. I’ll calm down now and point out that all linguists, except the crackpots, agree that languages do not degrade. Change is not degredation. The only deficient languages are languages with no native speakers, e.g. dead languages and pidgins. Different dialects of English have different grammatical rules. If those features are associated with a stigmatized group, then those features are also stigmatized. Double negatives are an example of this, they’ve gone in and out of style for centuries (Shakespeare used them.)
Standard American English changes and has changed, and will change. We can argue about what counts as good art and style when composing a complex thought, but most of what people talk about when they cry “bad grammar” is just a different grammar.
and zuzu, actually, someone DID make up the rules, and it’s rather frustrating, as I can’t recall his name. The idea of most of the rules of grammar, standard spelling, all his idea.
You’re probably thinking of Henry Alford who wrote A Plea for the Queen’s English in the mid-19th century.
“But I’ll afford a charity of interpretation here not being afforded myself.”
“…not being afforded me,” actually. “Myself” is reflexive.
Just a note on Otto Man’s and Chris Clarke’s comments.
I was once in the position of reading through numerous entrants for a scholarship and advising on who might be a good choice. It was a scholarship that may have given a person a break in the field of journalism. A lot of kids came fishing, from privileged backgrounds, for whom this was just another scholarship for which they’d applied and the effort they put into it said as much.
One applicant who stood out was dyslexic, not privileged, was older than the others, had been going to a community college and struggling with the dyslexia. The spelling was horrible. The piece of writing he’d entered was great. He cared. He had passion. His profs cared and sent glowing recommendations. I knew all the reasons why anyone would say he shouldn’t get the scholarship but I recommended him and the person for whom I was doing the sorting of applicants looked him over and chose to recommend him.
He wasn’t chosen for one of the scholarships and I was very disappointed for him.
There’s a person for whom I maintain a website who has horrible grammar and can’t spell well. He’s an advocate for human rights and has been in a couple of ACLU trials. I don’t correct the grammar and spellings on things he submits to me to put up. It’s a matter of respect for the individual and some of the things he’s accomplished. I have worried that some will take a look and dismiss his efforts and achievements because of grammatical errors and still I feel best to leave it as it is, because the corrections would change it to be my writing rather than his own.
Of course one could charge it would also be a painful matter of the blind leading the blind as I’m dyslexic. But the fact I’m also dyslexic isn’t why I recommended the individual for the scholarship. It was because he was only one of a handful, out of hundreds, who submitted something worth reading, despite all the grammatical and spelling errors. And he needed that scholarship. But, perhaps, because I’m also dyslexic, I was able to look past the grammar and spelling, understanding they weren’t a reflection of his intelligence.
LOL, what strange kind of thread is this where Chris Clarke double-posting around message number 98 makes me snort a laugh hard enough to aspirate my pita bread?
agreed, Chris.
my rule for “correcting someone on grammar” is “if I got confused to the point where it took me more than 5 seconds to figure out what the meaning of the sentence was, I’ll point it out”
doesn’t happen often. if it’s an error that spellcheck/grammar check would get right in a single pass without thought (its/its. “tihs,” etc.) I think everyone should let it slide, as many people are used to typing in a program which auto-corrects tiny crap like that, and they don’t have to worry about it. (which, in case you’re wondering, is why I rarely have capitalization at the start of my sentences. too much work to go back and fix.)
I’m wholly in jedmunds’ team on that.
not with jedmunds team on this. got my own team of “if you understood what I said well enough to make a correction. you got my meaning. shut the fuck up.”
I edit professional work and acedemic works. blog comments ain’t worth the 15 minutes of proofreading.
Zuzu, I don’t claim oppression. And in fact, I explicitly claimed the opposite just so that no one would make comments as stupid as yours.
Well, fuck you very much, too.
Your comment about grammar being classist was unbelievably condescending since it assumes that the lower classes do not, as a rule, learn or use proper grammar. You may say you’re not claiming oppression, but your only argument against grammar rules seems to be that they’re classist and oppressive.
Fuck! If I read that slow then I’d change professions.most of what people talk about when they cry “bad grammar” is just a different grammar.
“A different grammar” implies to me that there’s an internal consistency, as in Black English. Most of the bad grammar I see is anything but consistent.
g-rant summed it up nicely.
I doubt any philosopher would claim that the rules of Arithmetic are arbitrary.
Well, not arbitrary in the sense of being random; there are certainly reasons for them.
What a lot of philosophers would claim is that their meaning is derived wholly from convention, meaning that there’s no real fact of the matter. Or that they have no definite meaning at all: think Kripke’s ‘quus’ function.
sunajanus, I can read several times that speed.
but if I want to catch errors in my own writing, I have to read verry… veerrrryyyyy slooowwwlllyyyy.
because my eyes glance over stuff like that in my own writing, because I know what I was saying. I can catch the supid big things quick. but small stuff (transposed i and e in some word, for example) just get glanced over.
What a lot of philosophers would claim is that their meaning is derived wholly from convention, meaning that there’s no real fact of the matter. Or that they have no definite meaning at all: think Kripke’s ‘quus’ function.
and what’s the deal with base 10?
see? like “supid.” I knew I meant to have a t in there. and just reading it once isn’t enough to catch it.
Ach. From what I’ve just read about the quus function it seems we are miscommunicating. That’s not Mathematics. It’s logic, at best. Philosophy and rational thought are certainly related to Mathematics but Mathematics is subject to proof, disproof, or formal undecidability. Philosophy is, mostly, not.
The use of base 10 is conventional. 28 is the conventional representation of the 2nd perfect number. It’s still the 2nd perfect number whether written in base 10 or as 34 in base 8. (A perfect number is a number that is equal to the sum of its divisors excluding itself. They’re very rare and the question of whether or not there are a finite number of them is an unanswered question in number theory.) The little I read about the quus function
is not very interesting and the discussion goes on to talk about confusion engendered by people using or misusing the + sign for the <snark> ⊕ symbol.As for not capitalizing the beginning of sentences… That’s just crazy-talk. Keep it up and your pinky fingers will atrophy. If you use a predictive word processing program in conjunction with a spell- and grammar-checking program you’ll end up with no pinkies at all.
Count me among those who is distracted by grammatical errors, but doesn’t normally bother to comment on them in blogs. (I mean, I get paid to do that at work, so why should I do it here for free?)
And, with regard to the (alleged) Churchill quote, I first ran into it in conjunction with the ban on ending sentences with prepositions. (”A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.”) Shortly after I encountered the perfect - perfectly delightful, IMHO - version of preposition-packing. A small child, grumbling at being tucked into bed with a non-favorite story, asks the parent: “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?”
You don’t have to be a Grammar Nazi to like that, but it probably helps to be a Grammar Nerd.
(”A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.”)
yes, and cliches should be avoided like the plague.
Well, fuck you very much, too.
Do we have a name for someone who takes cute little swipes at what they percieve as low hanging fruit, but can’t handle a little swipe in return, my cliche using pal?
“Your comment about grammar being classist was unbelievably condescending since it assumes that the lower classes do not, as a rule, learn or use proper grammar. You may say you’re not claiming oppression, but your only argument against grammar rules seems to be that they’re classist and oppressive.”
Check your reading comprehension, douche.
Well, just what was the point of your raising the oppression of the less privileged?
You’re obviously privileged if you exempt yourself, and you know the rules of grammar. You just can’t be arsed to use them, so you write a self-indulgent post whining about grammar Nazis picking on you. And the best you can do when called out on this is to spout some condescending bullshit about grammar as class oppression?
Color me less than impressed by your class consciousness.
A small child, grumbling at being tucked into bed with a non-favorite story, asks the parent: “What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?”
What did you bring that book I didn’t want to be read out of to about over in Down Under up for?
But, perhaps, because I’m also dyslexic, I was able to look past the grammar and spelling, understanding they weren’t a reflection of his intelligence.
I completely agree, and I’m sorry if I didn’t make my feelings clear on the subject.
I spend a lot of time editing writing with absolutely horrible grammar and spelling. (Occasionally it’s my own.) What matters to me is not so much the grammar and spelling - though that does factor into the editorial considerations when I’m doing triage on a short schedule - but how reliable is the information in the writing?
You can be a horrible speller for any number of reasons and still get the facts straight, and your interpretation of them as well. And I’m happy to lend a hand fixing the grammar and spelling so that the writer’s intent shines through.
The thing is I’ve never worked with a dyslexic writer who’s said they couldn’t be bothered to fix the mistakes.
The thing is I’ve never worked with a dyslexic writer who’s said they couldn’t be bothered to fix the mistakes.
God, no. Usually, they try very hard to fix what they can catch and ask for help/understanding on the rest.
Or maybe they either just don’t get or refuse to accept the informal nature of much of the internet.
I hate that bullshit excuse. Good, clear writing is equally good and clear regardless of whether the audience is a bunch of smart people or real people on a blog. It’s one think if we’re talking about slang of jargon or informal constructions and usages (to the extent English recognizes the distinction). But I make the same effort to write well here as I do for work, and it’s not burdensome.
zuzu, little dipshit, if I make a grammar mistake, it’s because, for whatever reason, I did not make the effort to prevent it from happening. I do not want to excuse it for any reason. I do not go out of my way to make mistakes, and my record, I think, matches up pretty well with most of the blogs one will visit in a day. I’m not whining about anything in this post. I’m making fun of people who feel the need to point out proof-reading omissions. There is a difference.
Then, when I point out that Dadahead’s argument is one I agree with, I go out of my way to distance what I wrote in my post from that claim, to avoid getting stupid fucking comments as if I was claiming I was getting oppressed. And what happens. Jagoff one calls me an elitist. And Jagoff two (aka you, fuckstick) claims that I’m claiming oppression. If you cannot read and comprehend within context, that is your problem from now I on, because I’m done with it.
My goodness. What multi-legged, hairy thing crawled up your ass and died? I don’t recall having a particularly contentious history with you, and I certainly didn’t say anything during this discussion that would invite such abusive language.
that is your problem from now I on, because I’m done with it.
LOL, nice one.
Would have gone with “Bcuz with it im dun” personally but it’s your blog…
From what I’ve just read about the quus function it seems we are miscommunicating. That’s not Mathematics. It’s logic, at best.
The point of the quus function thing is that the addition function itself can’t be distinguished from it (unless you happen to get to a certain example).
Logic and math aren’t really distinct, anyway, as far as their epistemic grounding.
Jagoff one calls me an elitist.
Jagoff one? Is that me, or Chris Clarke? Can we share the honor?
Sheesh. Lighten up, Francis.
“Eats, shoots & leaves” - Lynne Truss. Read it.
Jagoff one? Is that me, or Chris Clarke? Can we share the honor?
You only get to have a Jagoff to yourself if you’re a girl.
That, and a douche, a little dipshit, AND a fuckstick!
I enjoy being a girl!
Sure they can, the plus sign (+) appears on every keyboard and the quus symbol that the author of the quote couldn’t find is (⊕). Darned old, smelly, pointy headed coot should have stuck to his Underwood where he could have used the backspace key and overstruck the + sign when he meant ⊕ instead of getting on the internets. ÷⟩I don’t really know enough about the debate on the quus function but I do know enough about Math to say that it is incontrovertible. Russell and Whitehead’s attempt to systematize Mathematics failed not because there was any controversy about the “truth” of Mathematics but because of Gödel’s demonstration that any sufficiently complex set of postulates necessarily included theorems that are not provable within that set of postulates. (Attempts to derive a proof of the theorem that parallel lines never converge from the first 4 of Euclid’s postulates is an example.) However, that does not cast doubt on those things that can be proven such as there are an infinite number of primes or that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle sum to 180°. Those are irrefutable aspects of arithmetic and Cartesian geometry.
You only get to have a Jagoff to yourself if you’re a girl.
That, and a douche, a little dipshit, AND a fuckstick!
I enjoy being a girl!
What? would you have preferred gendered insults?
For the record, CC is jagoff one. I barely noticed you Otto man, except to the extent I think you’re wrong.
Like I said at the top, I still love everyone.
except for R. Mildred. She’s a meanie.
What? would you have preferred gendered insults?
No, just some better ones. I’m disappointed.
Otto Man:
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
That the evolution of a natural language is inevitably a downward path, a failing and an obscuring and a corrupting, is a very common and very silly belief. I won’t attribute this position to you (I don’t think that’s necessarily what you meant) but I wanted to point this out.
“The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”
A widespread “bad habit” is the new correct usage.
“If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly”
I wouldn’t say that many “bad habits”, i.e. new practices, introduce any new ambiguity into the language, nor do they inhibit clear thinking.