Pre and de
Oct. 11th, 2013 05:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supergeeThere is an endless war between the prescriptivists, who think that Rules are the most important thing, and descriptivists, who think that language is a great place for majority vote. Between this Scylla and Charybdis, there are those of us who want language to be a good tool, flexible and not encumbered by ancient strictures, but precise where it has to be: disinterested and literally are excellent words as long as they mean what they mean, and not what a lot of people would vote for.
I thought I saw hope in Lingua France, an attack on "zombie rules" that picked up good old split infinitive & terminal preposition and approved nothing worse than the mildly annoying "bored of," until it got to the tenth and last, accepting "try and," a usage almost Republican in its stupidity. You don't do two things--try and do--you try to do something. That's almost as bad as the "horrible little oven mitt"* saying "There is no try."
*Thank you, David Brin
I thought I saw hope in Lingua France, an attack on "zombie rules" that picked up good old split infinitive & terminal preposition and approved nothing worse than the mildly annoying "bored of," until it got to the tenth and last, accepting "try and," a usage almost Republican in its stupidity. You don't do two things--try and do--you try to do something. That's almost as bad as the "horrible little oven mitt"* saying "There is no try."
*Thank you, David Brin
