<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There is a universal fellowship of nitpickers and always has been.<\/p>\n
More than a century ago, the iconoclastic American writer Ambrose Bierce gave the world Write It Right<\/em> (1909) and The Devil\u2019s Dictionary<\/em> (1911). George Orwell published his classic essay Politics and the English Language<\/em> in 1946. In the 1970s and \u201980s, former NBC news anchor Edwin Newman and New York literary and drama critic John Simon each wrote best-sellers deploring our nation\u2019s declining language skills. The New York Times Magazine <\/em>ran William Safire\u2019s curmudgeonly \u201cOn Language\u201d column from 1979 until his death in 2009.<\/p>\n There are any number of grammar sticklers online. GrammarGirl.com is a popular site with young people; baby boomers might enjoy bbhq.com\/brushup.htm.<\/p>\n There are also countless reference books, starting with the American Heritage dictionary, with its Usage Panel of distinguished scholars. No pedant\u2019s library is complete without The Elements of Style<\/em> by Strunk and White and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage<\/em> by H.W. Fowler (I recommend the 1965 second edition; I\u2019m told the 1996 third edition has made some questionable compromises).<\/p>\n Serious authors and journalists are never much farther from the Chicago Manual of Style<\/em> or the Associated Press Stylebook<\/em> than a clergyman is from his bible.<\/p>\n These books present a united front against ignorance, but reading them, one notices their authors don\u2019t march in lockstep\u2014like politicians, there are conservative and liberal word nerds, and they can differ widely over what\u2019s acceptable.<\/p>\n Consider this sentence: It\u2019s different for men than for women<\/em>. \u201cSince the 18th century,\u201d says the American Heritage dictionary, \u201clanguage critics have singled out different than <\/em>as incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Although hairsplitters from both sides of the aisle endorse different from<\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s different for men from for women\u201d obviously doesn\u2019t work. And \u201cIt\u2019s different for men from the way it is for women\u201d is wordy and stiff. So language liberals would tend to accept different for men than for women<\/em> in cases like this. The conservatives wouldn\u2019t budge. They\u2019d most likely insist on rewriting the sentence\u2014something like \u201cMen and women differ\u201d neatly sidesteps this whole puddle of mud.<\/p>\n \u00a0It came as a surprise that some of my reference books didn\u2019t condemn different than<\/em> outright. Fowler\u2019s venerated Dictionary of Modern English Usage<\/em> notes that \u201cdifferent than <\/em>is sometimes preferred by good writers to the cumbersome different from that which <\/em>etc.<\/em>\u201d To which Wilson Follett\u2019s Modern American Usage<\/em> responds, \u201cTo condone different than <\/em>because it is sometimes awkward to follow different <\/em>with [from<\/em>] is defeatism.\u201d \u201cThe idea that there is anything wrong with different than <\/em>is a superstition,\u201d declares Roy H. Copperud in A Dictionary of Usage and Style<\/em>. Theodore M. Bernstein, in The Careful Writer<\/em>, fires back that if you accept different than<\/em>, you are a \u201cstructural linguist permissivist.\u201d Ouch, that can\u2019t be good.<\/p>\n \u00a0I still use these books a lot. Collectively, they\u2019ve helped me become the stuffed shirt I am today.<\/p>\n \u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a universal fellowship of nitpickers and always has been. More than a century ago, the iconoclastic American writer Ambrose Bierce gave the world Write It Right (1909) and The Devil\u2019s Dictionary (1911). George Orwell published his classic essay Politics and the English Language in 1946. In the 1970s and \u201980s, former NBC news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,25,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-effective-writing","category-humor","category-prepositions"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}