There are exceptions, agreed. Various IRC and ICQ conventions have established particular stylistic rules for those mediums, but as regards the informational Website and Weblog, the publisher has chosen to publish for the CRT and LCD instead of paper, simultaneously accepting the duties of editor and designer. Do it right and you get mindshare.

So who gives the language critic his or her authority? William Safire's quip, "We are the ones who care - we've registered for the linguistic primary" says it in a nutshell. The Vocabula Review (http://www.vocabula.com/) is a good example of a registered candidate. The critic probably has at least a dozen dictionaries, style guides covering various eras and subjects, and studies the usage wars between prescriptive and descriptive grammarians to maintain an intimate familiarity with the key campaigns.

In The Story of Webster's Third (ISBN: 0521558697), the editor, Philip Gove, exhorts his team to "read everything: matchbook covers, bus schedules..." in addition to newspapers and books. The language critic follows this advice and develops a sense of what "the usual thing" is in a particular case. No, he won't likely be a James Joyce, but he will be authoritative when he reads something and opines, "That isn't standard."

Knowing what is normal, what is expected, is the key element of crafting and editing prose that reads smoothly. Ideas can always be striking, but the mode of their delivery should not jar or startle the reader without good reason. Better for the language and form to take a back seat and let the thoughts of the writer flow forth cleanly from page to reader than for the text to draw attention to itself. As always, poetry, rhetoric, etc., will test this rule, but the exceptions only prove its validity.

So write well.
7:04:53 PM       

Seems that you can't turn on the Idiot Box these days without seeing tributes to Elvis and features on Graceland. Now, I like a few of the guy's songs, but Graceland seems to be a monument to kitsch that proves some people just shouldn't have unlimited means to express themselves. What we've seen of the inside of Ozzy's home makes this utterly clear.

You might note, and correctly so, that there are plenty of people living in trailers who furnish their homes in bad taste as well, but they aren't subsidizing the zebra-skin upholstery industry while they're at it. They are, on the other hand, apparently working as Katie Couric's fashion consultants - yikes, she's looking downright over-frosted in the Amy Yamada, Yokosuka Base front-gate grrl style (the ones who stand on the left).

"Malt Beverage." Now who do they think they're fooling with this one? From Zima, to Skyy Blue, to Smirnoff, to Captain Morgan, a whole line of cloyingly sweet hangover-inducing concoctions have flooded the market and there still isn't any generic term for these things (except "crap"). I've deduced that the beer, wine, and punch advisory boards have enacted laws that restrict what may be sold as such, which leaves Zima, et al., in some linguistic no-man's land. Your vocabulary just got a whole lot less interesting.

If the same thinking applies to other areas, we're going to be in trouble. Say, for instance, that apparel makers start to circle the wagons against the intrusion of urban guerrilla chic that has spawned the "bustin' a sag" look. Should we expect the new entrants to label their goods "short-like lower-body covering," "shoe-like foot garment," and "hat-like headwrap"?

Blog on.
8:49:22 AM