Monday, February 18, 2002
The words came to me a little more willingly today than yesterday. Another thousand on Chapter 3. I hope to finish this chapter by Thursday at the latest. I'm beginning to think that perhaps this journal is making me into a slightly faster writer, by complicating my already manic work ethic with the fear of being perceived as lazy by however many people are keeping up with this thing.
Anyway, not much else to say tonight, except I need sleep. A lot of sleep. I don't know when that'll happen. I did find a quote I thought I would share, though it only seems half as amusing now as it did a few hours ago. But it pertains to my ongoing thoughts of language and style. From The Elements of Editing by Arthur Plotnik (Collier Books, 1982):
We have no authority, no national language board. What we do have are at least ten thousand educated and well-spoken "experts" with hundreds of thousands of disagreements among them.
For example, the Harper's Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (Harper and Row) claims to be "the most authoritative and comprehensive reference book on the state of the language today." Why so authoritative? Because, recognizing rightly that "standard" usage varies according to human experience, it draws upon the advice of 136 outstanding writers and editors, not to mention the wisdom of editors William and Marey Morris. The result is an excellent source of advice for editing decisions, one of the best of its kind. But those seeking absolute authority will note that, overall, the 136 writers offer 136 different views on "correct" usage. True, there is general accord on some questions. Only 4 percent of a panel voted yes on using ain't in writing, and then only as a matter of style; but a panel voting data is vs. data are was split 49 percent for is , 51 percent for are . One ends up taking the view of favorites on a given panel — or that of W. H. Auden, whose opinion on the data question was simply: "I am not sure."
My goal here is not to undermine the authority of experts on the English language (and I do believe that such experts exist and should be respected, when it's possible to figure out what they mean), but to draw attention to the fact that standardization of the language has been, at best, marginally successful. And I think that for authors working within this language (which truly is not the more euphonious of mother tongues), writers in desperate need of all possible latitude, this can only be good news.
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