Even today — subjected as we are to the apotheosis of popular culture — using the English language respectfully helps us maintain a sense of ourselves and our values. To do otherwise, to disregard the ways of our words, is to forsake our humanity and, perhaps, even forfeit our future. A society is generally as lax as its language. And in a society of this sort, easiness and mediocrity are much esteemed.
The Vocabula Review is published on the third Tuesday of each month. Click here to read the journal archives:
Electronic publishing empowers writers and readers in ways that no technology has ever done before. Whatever you write — fiction, poetry, news, how-to books, or business documents — exciting things are happening that will directly affect how you write and distribute your work. As readers, also, we are entering a new era of rapid cultural and social change resulting from this new technology.
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Plain English
Dave Fox
What is an article about plain English doing in The Vocabula Review? After all, many of you may subscribe because you love the section on "Scarcely Used Words." There isn't much scope for using words such as "amanuensis" and "atrabilious" in a plain English document. (These were just two of October's little gems.) Look at my e-mail signature too: "Because clear documents make you clearly better to do business with." How can someone who so blatantly starts a sentence with a conjunction, and then ends it with a preposition, be allowed to contribute here?
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The Wrong-Headedness of Linguistic Self-Righteousness
Alan Pagliere
I recently received an email invitation to subscribe to The Vocabula Review. Before deciding, I browsed the archives on the web to get a flavor of the newsletter. Much of what I found was the by now rather old (read cliched) lamentations on the declining state of English.
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Grumbling About Grammar
Although few people can complain of another's grammatical mistakes with impunity, that is, without revealing their own, I am hopeful that "Grumbling About Grammar" will encourage us all to pay more heed to how the language is used — by ourselves as well as by others — while bettering our ability to speak and write it. The grammatical errors that I have assembled here come from publications like The New York Times, Wired, TV Guide, and Martha Stewart Living. Others come from websites like Salon.com and Winmag.com. And still others from TV newscasters, politicians, and businesspeople. These are the people we so often read and listen to — whether or not we care to. Woefully, it is not Edith Wharton or Henry James from whom we learn to speak and write the language; rather, it is these sometime purveyors of confused, misused, and abused language.
affect Misused for effect. • However, producing truth has the opposite affect. USE effect. [Nationally syndicated columnist]
The word affect is much less often used as a noun than it is as a verb. All the same, it is often misused for, or perhaps misspelled, effect. The noun affect means a feeling or emotion; the noun effect means a result or outcome.
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The Grumbling About Grammar Awards (GAGAs)
Our girls are not part of this presidential process, and I'm not going to let them get drug in. — U.S. presidential candidate George W. Bush
Even if I were an ardent Republican, I doubt whether I would vote for a man who uses drug instead of dragged.
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Elegant English vs. Everyday English
We all know far too well how to write everyday English, but few of us know how to write elegant English — English that is expressed with music as well as meaning, style as well as substance. The point of this feature is not to suggest that people should try to emulate these examples of elegant English but to show that the language can be written with grace and polish — qualities that much contemporary writing is bereft of and could benefit from.
1. Everyday English: The society of friends or other groups is one thing — and we often enjoy ourselves in them — but government is quite another; it's a negative thing that at every turn seems to hold us back.
Elegant English: Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. [Thomas Paine, Common Sense]
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Scarcely Used Words
Inadequate though they may be, words distinguish us from all other living things. Indeed, our worth is partly in our words. Effective use of language — clear writing and speaking — is a measure of our humanness. What's more, the more words we know and can correctly use, the broader will be our understanding of self, the keener our acquaintance with humankind.
babylonian (bab-ah-LO-nee-an) adj. 1. pertaining to Babylon or Babylonia. 2. excessively luxurious, pleasure seeking, unrestrained, or wicked.
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