Conventional Wisdom

Some thoughts about style and usage

For quite a while, I’ve been working on a manuscript called “Conventional Wisdom.” Here is an excerpt from it:

Introduction

If you have ever heard or read something that has distracted, confused, or misled you — something ambiguous like biweekly (does it mean “twice a week” or “every two weeks”?), something redundant like “free gift” (isn’t a gift always free?), or something pretentious and euphemistic like “utilize the facilities” (what’s wrong with “use to toilet”?) — you know that at times some speakers and writers fail to communicate clearly.

And even if you have never said or written biweekly, “free gift,” or “utilize the facilities,” perhaps you remember that at times, after you’ve said or written something, you’ve wondered whether you have failed to communicate clearly.

If you do remember having wondered, you may want to study the conventions of style and usage.

Some Definitions

The term usage refers both to diction (that is, the choice or words) and to syntax (that is, the arrangement of words in groups called “constructions”). The term style, as Roy H. Copperud says in American Usage and Style, refers both to “a code of mechanical practice” (that is, to a collection of principles “governing such details as capitalization, abbreviation, and spelling”) and to “a manner of expression” (that is, to a way of speaking or writing that “would be described by an informal style, an elegant style, etc.”). And the term conventions refers to the rules of style and usage — rules that, as Sir Ernest Gowers says in Plain Words, “are in the main no more than the distillation of successful experiments made by writers of English through the centuries in how best to handle words so as to make a writer’s meaning plain”; and that, as I’ll add, are also in the main no more than the distillation of successful experiments made by speakers of English.

Conforming to the Conventions

I suggest that conforming to the conventions will help a speaker or writer to communicate clearly, because if he conforms to them (if, for example, he prefers either “twice a week” or “every two weeks” — whichever expresses his meaning — to biweekly), his listeners or readers will think about what he is trying to communicate, not about how he is trying to communicate. In other words, if he conforms to the conventions, he won’t distract, confuse, or mislead his listeners or readers.

Disagreements

Some authorities, known as descriptivists, believe that no one should tell anyone else which words and constructions to use and which to avoid. Others, known as prescriptivists, strongly disagree. Gowers, in his preface to A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2d ed., explains those disagreements when he compares the beliefs of Otto Jespersen with those of H. W. Fowler, two authorities who debated during the early years of the twentieth century:

“Jespersen . . . held that ‘of greater value than this prescriptive grammar is a purely descriptive grammar which, instead of acting as a guide to what should be said or written, aims at finding out what is actually said or written by those who use the language’ and recording it objectively like a naturalist observing the facts of nature. Fowler . . . held that the proper purpose of a grammarian was ‘to tell the people not what they do . . . but what they ought to do.’”

In the 1950s

Until the late 1950s, the conflict between descriptivists and prescriptivists remained slight because their activities were different. While prescriptivists taught speakers and writer how they ought to use the language, descriptivists observed and recorded the ways in which they did use it.

In the late 1950s, the conflict became heated because, as the prescriptivist Theodore M. Bernstein says in The Careful Writer, American education began to enter the current age, “an age in which there is a widespread urge to be scientific — to stand aside and analyze things, classify them, and describe them.” Descriptivists, who became influential in American schools, began, in Bernstein’s words, “to apply the findings [of their observations] to the teaching of speaking and writing.” They began to teach speakers and writers, as the descriptivists Bergen and Cornelia Evans did in A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, that because the language changes, “no one can say how a word ‘ought’ to be used. The best that anyone can do is to say how it is being used.”

Since the Late 1950s

Since the late 1950s, descriptivists have become extremely influential in American schools. Consequently, according to the prescriptivist Wilson Follett, from whose Modern American Usage I’ve taken the following passage, the teaching of speaking and writing has deteriorated:

“The articulate public continually complains. The children, we hear, are badly taught and cannot read, spell, or write; employers despair of finding literate clerks and typists; the professions deplore the thickening of jargon which darkens counsel and impedes action; scientists cry out in their journals that their colleagues cannot report their facts intelligibly; and businessmen declare many bright people unemployable for lack of the ability to say what they mean in any medium.”

The teaching of speaking and writing would be improved, prescriptivists maintain, if teachers would teach speakers and writers that even though the language does change (and when it does, the conventions do, too), one can still say how words “ought” to be used because one can still see that some ways of using words are clearer than other ways — and therefore preferable to them. Although prescriptivists occasionally disagree with one another about how quickly the language and the conventions change, most prescriptivists agree that conforming to the conventions I’ve examined “Conventional Wisdom” will help a speaker or writer to communicate clearly.

Some Thoughts about “Conventional Wisdom”

So far, the manuscript contains about two hundred entries. A third of them concern words (e.g., about), a third constructions (e.g., “between you and I”), and a third subjects (e.g., CLICHES).

I’ll continue working on the manuscript, which is an introduction both to style and usage and to the works of some authorities. For anyone interested in those works, here is a list of the ones I’ve found most helpful:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

The Careful Writer, by Theodore M. Bernstein

American Usage and Style, by Roy H. Copperud

The Random House Handbook, by Frederick Crews

A Grammar of the English Language, by George O. Curme

Comfortable Words, by Bergen Evans

A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergen and Cornelia Evans

The ABC of Style, by Rudolf Flesch

Modern American Usage, by Wilson Follett

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H. W. Fowler

The King’s English, by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler

Garner’s Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner

Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers

The Reader Over Your Shoulder, by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge

Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin, by Otto Jespersen

“Politics and the English Language,” by George Orwell

The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, The Unabridged Edition

The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White

Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged

* * *

Copyright © 2023 by John Porter. All Rights Reserved.