Prescriptivist and descriptivist language

[Arkady]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

 

[Capitalist]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

Who Reads Whore Ads?

"Descriptivist" is a coverup word for permissiveness about discipline, without which the language will fall apart like everything else has when even lexicographers are inferior people placed in superior positions. A dictionary like that is a contradiction in terms. It panders to Diploma Dumbos and the lazy, sloppy generations that babble this verbal anarchy.

 

[BitterPill]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

I suppose I'm a bit prescriptivist, but I realize language changes over time, and I'm all right with that though it sure screwed-up Dylan Thomas' brilliant villanelle:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
​

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

 

[BitterPill]

Who Reads Whore Ads?

"Descriptivist" is a coverup word for permissiveness about discipline, without which the language will fall apart like everything else has when even lexicographers are inferior people placed in superior positions. A dictionary like that is a contradiction in terms. It panders to Diploma Dumbos and the lazy, sloppy generations that babble this verbal anarchy.

So you're on the side of Merriam-Webster.

Fair enough.

 

[as seen on tv]

if prescriptivists ruled, we'd still be speaking Elizabethan english, right?

Gadzooks - get thee to a nunnery!

 

[BitterPill]

if prescriptivists ruled, we'd still be speaking Elizabethan english, right?

Prescriptivists do rule both French and Spanish, but their effectiveness is spotty at best:

http://www.academie-francaise.fr/

http://www.rae.es/

Gadzooks - get thee to a nunnery!

I like the Shakespearean allusion though it seems gadzooks came about after Elizabeth's rule:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/gadzooks

 

[BitterPill]

This is interesting:

The [Oxford English Dictionary] was conceived (centuries after the [Dictionnaire de l’Académie française]) as a practical response to the realization that “existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and deficient” and is generally regarded as a descriptivist dictionary, recording the ways in which words are used, while the DAF is more of a prescriptivist dictionary, recording the ways in which words should be used. While the OED’s entries are liberally sprinkled with literary citations as examples of usage, the DAF has no need for them. And as a historical dictionary, the OED doesn’t ever delete a word from its (digital) pages, whereas the DAF will happily remove words deemed obsolete (and is quite transparent about doing so).​

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/03/academie-francaise/

in that the OED, along with Merriam-Webster, considers itself to be regarded as descriptivist.

 

[Colorforms]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

It is all a matter of communication. In communication, you need common frames of reference in order to get your point across. Staunch adherence to grammatical rules can be just as confusing as lax adherence, depending on where you are and who you're talking with.

Language does change over time. A study found that the easier a rule was to adhere to, the more often it was used. More arcane rules were more quickly discarded. In addition, with the advent of social media, entirely new variants of the language are being adopted with completely different rules.

It may give you comfort to hold onto a more rigid adherence to grammatical laws, but in doing so you risk being just as confusing to others as they are to you.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

I suppose I'm a bit prescriptivist, but I realize language changes over time, and I'm all right with that though it sure screwed-up Dylan Thomas' brilliant villanelle:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
​

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

Unstructured Grammar Leads to Unstructured Thought

Language doesn't change by itself; it is mutated by powerful forces we are tricked into looking up to as role models.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Who Reads Whore Ads?

"Descriptivist" is a coverup word for permissiveness about discipline, without which the language will fall apart like everything else has when even lexicographers are inferior people placed in superior positions. A dictionary like that is a contradiction in terms. It panders to Diploma Dumbos and the lazy, sloppy generations that babble this verbal anarchy.

So you're on the side of Merriam-Webster.

.

In Praise of Folly

You're on the side of poor reading comprehension. M-W has taken a stand to let English fall apart as it lazily promotes a permissive and slavish collapse to illiterate fads.

 

[EatTheRich]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-English-History-Linguistic-Aggravation/dp/0399165584
A hilarious book on the subject, which quotes the prescriptivist scolds of yesteryear to mocking effect. Some examples of usages that once bothered people, and now (I think) do not, from the appendix, "221 Words That Were Once Frowned Upon":

Claim: "A vulgarism that has made its way, probably through the advertising column, into journalism, & is now of daily currency, is the use of claim in the sense of assert, maintain, or represent."-Henry Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926.

Climb down: "Climb indicates ascension; in consequence, 'climb down' is censured."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Dilapidated: "[T]he word is from the Latin lapis, a stone, and cannot properly be used of any but a stone building."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

Dumb: "Dumb means primarily unable to speak; secondarily, reticent. Since a person who 'hasn't a word to say for himself' easily gets the reputation of being stupid, and since the German word dumm does mean stupid, dumb has come into local and vulgar use in the United States to mean stupid. All Authorities condemn its use in this sense."-Robert Palfrey Utter, Every-Day Words and Their Uses, 1916.

Forget it: "When used as the equivalent of 'don't talk about it,' it is a vulgarism that can not be too severely condemned."-Frank Vizetelly, Errors in English, 1906.

Graduate: "Students do not graduate; they are graduated."-Alfred Ayres, The Verbalist, 1894.

Homicide: "[C]annot be excused in my opinion for smellynge to much of the Latine."-Richarde Willes, The History of Trauayle, 1577.

Marry: " 'She married a man named Brown,' is incorrect .... A woman, when she weds, is married to a man, but the clergyman or magistrate marries her."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Pants: "Abbreviated from pantaloons, which are no longer worn. Vulgar exceedingly."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

 

[EatTheRich]

I also quite enjoyed Shea's "Shakespeare or rap lyrics" quiz, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The examples he chose (without the answers for now):

1. The music, ho!
2. But if you don't, I'll unsheathe my Excalibur, Like a noble knight.
3. Holla, holla!
4. This is the proper way man should use ink.
5. Let's beat him before his whore.
6. Welcome, ass, Now let's have a catch.
7. I live by the sword, I take my boys everywhere I go.
8. Never name her, child, if she be a whore.
9. The money that you owe me for the chain.
10. Pay me back when you shake it again.
11. Holla, ho! Curtis!
12. Sabotaged, Shellshocked, rocked and ruled, Day in the life of a fool.
13. Now the tables turned, but I remember they used to clown me.
14. Every square inch of it, that he chose for himself, is the best part.

 

[Colorforms]

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-English-History-Linguistic-Aggravation/dp/0399165584
A hilarious book on the subject, which quotes the prescriptivist scolds of yesteryear to mocking effect. Some examples of usages that once bothered people, and now (I think) do not, from the appendix, "221 Words That Were Once Frowned Upon":

Claim: "A vulgarism that has made its way, probably through the advertising column, into journalism, & is now of daily currency, is the use of claim in the sense of assert, maintain, or represent."-Henry Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926.

Climb down: "Climb indicates ascension; in consequence, 'climb down' is censured."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Dilapidated: "[T]he word is from the Latin lapis, a stone, and cannot properly be used of any but a stone building."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

Dumb: "Dumb means primarily unable to speak; secondarily, reticent. Since a person who 'hasn't a word to say for himself' easily gets the reputation of being stupid, and since the German word dumm does mean stupid, dumb has come into local and vulgar use in the United States to mean stupid. All Authorities condemn its use in this sense."-Robert Palfrey Utter, Every-Day Words and Their Uses, 1916.

Forget it: "When used as the equivalent of 'don't talk about it,' it is a vulgarism that can not be too severely condemned."-Frank Vizetelly, Errors in English, 1906.

Graduate: "Students do not graduate; they are graduated."-Alfred Ayres, The Verbalist, 1894.

Homicide: "[C]annot be excused in my opinion for smellynge to much of the Latine."-Richarde Willes, The History of Trauayle, 1577.

Marry: " 'She married a man named Brown,' is incorrect .... A woman, when she weds, is married to a man, but the clergyman or magistrate marries her."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Pants: "Abbreviated from pantaloons, which are no longer worn. Vulgar exceedingly."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

Kill: To create a vacancy without nominating a successor - The Devil's Dictionary

 

[EatTheRich]

Another favorite passage from Shea's book:

So in lieu of any formal pronouncement of rules, here is what I hope will be a helpful list of the many roles of the apostrophe and how it should, and should not, be used (at least according to various grammar guides of the past several hundred years).

1. It functions as a contraction, indicating that one or more letters are missing. Except when the letters aren't actually missing, as when the seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick wrote "What fate decreed, time now ha's made us see."*
*"To Prince Charles Upon His Coming to Exeter." As Barbara Strang has noted, this was a not uncommon way of writing has.

2. It indicates possession in singular nouns, sitting between the end of the noun and an s. Except when it didn't, as in the case of names that already end in an s, such as Jones' book (a practice that is now out of style). Or when it comes at the end of certain words that end in a sibilant, such as for conscience' sake.

3. It indicates possession for plural nouns, between the end of the plural word and the s that follows, as in children's. Except when the word ends in an s, in which case it should come at the end of the word, with no additional s added ("the books' covers").

4. It does not indicate possession for pronouns, which are written as hers, theirs, and ours. Except when it does, for certain indefinite pronouns, such as A Room of One's Own.

5. It's should be used only to mean it is and should never be used to indicate the third-person neuter possessive pronoun, unless you are an idiot (such as Thomas Jefferson*).
*Jefferson, and many other eighteenth-century writers, commonly used an apostrophe for both forms of it's. In a letter to William Short on July 1, 1790, he wrote "It is to receive it's third reading to-day, and tho' it depends on a single vote, yet I believe we may count surely that it will pass that house."

6. It is widely acknowledged that apostrophes should never be used with verbs. Except when they should: Jeremiah Wharton, in his 1654 English Grammar, held that the third-person singular (as in "He write's very poorly") should use an apostrophe. This view appears to have been unique to Wharton; no other grammarians have made such a claim.

7. The apostrophe should not be used to indicate the plural of a noun. Except when it does. It formerly fulfilled this function for some plural nouns, especially of a foreign origin, that would end in a vowel (such as folio's), as well as for some plural nouns that would end in a sibilant sound (such as waltz's). Until recently it was used to indicate the plural form of decades (1980's), numbers (6's and 7's), individual letters written as plurals (dot your i's and cross your t's), abbreviations (BMOC's and VIP's), and symbols (#'s and &'s).

I trust that this will clear up any confusion on the matter.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-English-History-Linguistic-Aggravation/dp/0399165584
A hilarious book on the subject, which quotes the prescriptivist scolds of yesteryear to mocking effect. Some examples of usages that once bothered people, and now (I think) do not, from the appendix, "221 Words That Were Once Frowned Upon":

Claim: "A vulgarism that has made its way, probably through the advertising column, into journalism, & is now of daily currency, is the use of claim in the sense of assert, maintain, or represent."-Henry Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926.

Climb down: "Climb indicates ascension; in consequence, 'climb down' is censured."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Dilapidated: "[T]he word is from the Latin lapis, a stone, and cannot properly be used of any but a stone building."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

Dumb: "Dumb means primarily unable to speak; secondarily, reticent. Since a person who 'hasn't a word to say for himself' easily gets the reputation of being stupid, and since the German word dumm does mean stupid, dumb has come into local and vulgar use in the United States to mean stupid. All Authorities condemn its use in this sense."-Robert Palfrey Utter, Every-Day Words and Their Uses, 1916.

Forget it: "When used as the equivalent of 'don't talk about it,' it is a vulgarism that can not be too severely condemned."-Frank Vizetelly, Errors in English, 1906.

Graduate: "Students do not graduate; they are graduated."-Alfred Ayres, The Verbalist, 1894.

Homicide: "[C]annot be excused in my opinion for smellynge to much of the Latine."-Richarde Willes, The History of Trauayle, 1577.

Marry: " 'She married a man named Brown,' is incorrect .... A woman, when she weds, is married to a man, but the clergyman or magistrate marries her."-Josephine Turck Baker, The Correct Word, 1899.

Pants: "Abbreviated from pantaloons, which are no longer worn. Vulgar exceedingly."-Ambrose Bierce, Write It Right, 1909.

Lemming's Way to Lexical Suicide

You're glorifying the status quo. The only justification for your mockery is that those stupidly misused words were arrogantly pushed ahead and now seem perfectly acceptable.

 

[EatTheRich]

Lemming's Way to Lexical Suicide

You're glorifying the status quo. The only justification for your mockery is that those stupidly misused words were arrogantly pushed ahead and now seem perfectly acceptable.

Language changes. It is a conventional way of communicating information, nothing more and nothing less. Although correct language usage is sometimes important to prevent miscommunication, capricious and contradictory standards based on archaic--or, more often, newly invented--rules are often used to distinguish the university-educated intelligentsia from the masses and justify the snobbery of the former.

 

[EatTheRich]

There's an musing piece here about a Slate author getting a Twitter smackdown by a dictionary:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_..._tweeted_no_one_cares_about_how_you_feel.html

The bit I'd like to discuss is the prescriptivist/descriptivist debate about language. If you aren't familiar, descriptivists think that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to describe how the language is actually used, rather than to prescribe how it should be used. Prescriptivists believe that the job of dictionaries and grammarians is to defend the ramparts of those rules, educating the public out of even the most common mistakes.

For example, usually if you hear the word "enormity," it's likely describing the largeness of something. For the first couple hundred years of that word's history in English, though, it referred to the wickedness and outrageousness of something, and using it to reference size without negative connotations was considered an error. Now it's so widespread that dictionaries include the neutral largeness meaning as an alternate definition. A prescriptivist would say that just because an error has become widespread is no reason to stop combating it.

If you look at the link above, though, you'll see that even descriptivists draw the line somewhere. They may be cool with saying "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, given how widespread that has become, but they're not cool with using "their" as an alternative spelling for "they're," even though that is also extremely common. Whether based on frequency or just based on the perception of utility, they include one of those definitions and not the other. A prescriptivist would say they're both wrong.

I found this example interesting, because it captures my own muddled thinking on the topic. I'm a bit more prescriptivist than most people. Hearing someone say "literally" to mean "figuratively" drives me batty, despite it being the most common use of the word "literally" in practice. Yet I'm not a hard-core prescriptivist. To coin a phrase from Churchill, there are other finicky rules "up with which I will not put." If correct grammar sounds too fusty, I go with incorrect grammar. If the proper use of a word would just confuse most people (as with "enormity"), I won't use it that way.

I guess if I tried to un-muddle my muddled thinking on this, it comes down to utility. I err on the side of correct formal usage, because I think it encourages precision and clarity, but when I see a decent reason to break with formality, I don't hesitate. I don't like using "literally" to mean "figuratively," because that's just confusing... then we have no word to use to mean "literally." If someone got so mad that he literally had a stroke, I want to know that it meant an actual, literal, stroke, instead of just being a poetic way of emphasizing how mad he was.

So, what do people here think? Are you more prescriptivist or descriptivist? Are there particular "errors" that drive you bonkers? Are there technically correct grammar or word choices that strike you wrong? Certain dialects you can't stand ("this needs done," "let me ax you a question")? Common verbal tic that are like fingernails on a chalkboard ("like, she was totally like 'yeah'....")?

That said, I have my own pet peeves as well. I prefer the elegance of the old distinction between less/amount and fewer/number, where the former refers to comparisons between collectives of indeterminate number, while the latter refers to countable quanta.

 

[BitterPill]

Kill: To create a vacancy without nominating a successor - The Devil's Dictionary

Do you rely on The Devil's Dictionary all the time, some of the time, or only when you deem it convenient?

Anyway, it sounds like a descriptivist tome to be sure.

 

[Colorforms]

Do you rely on The Devil's Dictionary all the time, some of the time, or only when you deem it convenient?

Anyway, it sounds like a descriptivist tome to be sure.

Only when I deem it convenient, of course.