sticklerism

Guilty, your honour. I’m a stickler, a pedant, a member of the society for insisting that certain words be spelled a certain way, that apostrophes are important, and that every man, woman, and his or her dog should know where to put one. They aren’t difficult.

Three shelves of my library are devoted to style manuals, dictionaries, etymologies, commentaries on language and idioms, with titles like Usage and abusage, Weasel words, and the Dictionary of phrasal verbs.

I dub myself the Style Guru and write columns in 257 staff bulletins for two different employers over 12 years advising and beseeching colleagues to use less words, à la William Strunk, to eschew obscurantism and avoid pleonasm, sticklerism of the highest order.

That said, I’m a bit AC/DC too, play both sides of the fence without sitting on it, bat for both teams. I’m a word-slut, indulging myself in my own idiolect. I know, and insist, where an apostrophe should go, but I also know language is not set in stone, never has been.

I worship at the altar of English’s marvellous malleability and revel in the freedom to create my own words, my own particular and unique way of using language.

Enter Robert Lane Greene. I’m reading his You are what you speak, subtitled Grammar grouches, language laws and the power of words, wherein he sticks a sword right through the hearts of sticklers, those who don the cloak of authority and make rules about how people use words. His erudition impresses me no end.

Why must we not split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, or begin them with adjectives, he asks. At what point in time should we freeze spelling? Eggs would still be eggys if we did. Or Eggys. Or eyren. His Countimen still worship Mr Shakespeare’s deeds, but, prithee, no longer Speake or spell as he did, nor pronounce deeds as ‘dades’ as he did.

I take your point, Mr Greene. Sticklerism has no place, but neither is there a place in writing or speech for jargon, euphemism or weasel words, whatever they are.

My rule will continue to be that communicating with an audience is everything. If the words don’t speak to someone, then better words must be found or better ways of putting them together.

Rock on.