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.
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I doubt it. Yes, I am an electronic publisher, but I am also a very pragmatic man and I do not believe those techno-crystal-ball-gazers; remember Bill Gates once said: "640Kb RAM ought to be enough for everybody." I have 128Mb RAM, and it is barely enough. When computers became popular, self-proclaimed gurus declared: This is the end of paper. We produce more paper than ever before. A new technology does not destroy an old one; it simply complements it. We can still read the manuscripts written in the Middle Ages, but we have a hard time reading the first CD-ROM burned in the 1980s.
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Digital Publishing: Past, Present, and Future
John Rutledge
The printed book came into existence with the invention of the Gutenberg Press in 1456, though the paperback wasn't widely available until the 1930s. The transformation to digital medium has occurred much quicker.
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Why Are We Wordy?
Robert Hartwell Fiske
Why do we say seven words where two will do or write three instead of only one? Wordiness is arguably the biggest obstacle to clear writing and speaking. But before we can effectively combat it, perhaps we need a better understanding of why we are so often wordy.
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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.
aggravate Misused for irritating (or similar words). • The following aggravating situation might be all too familiar for the 27,000 people involved in vehicle accidents each year in Columbus. USE annoying. [The Columbus Dispatch]
Can there be any word more often misused? Aggravate means to make worse or to exacerbate — nothing more.
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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.
amanuensis (ah-man-yoo-EN-sis) n. a secretary.
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