John McIntyre provides some history to explain why English is the mess it is and why “all sorts of proscriptions live on in the marketplace of ideas — proscriptions against stranded prepositions, split infinitives, sentences beginning with coordinating conjunctions, ‘singular they’, and many more we’ve discussed here, endlessly — even when the ‘high-end’ advice literature generally admits them.”

He goes on to say that “We are almost certainly stuck with the language as it is, as it is spoken and written and commented on by its speakers and writers, messiness being an apparent corollary of liberty.”

When we embrace this truth – and it applies to far more than just our language – we can stop pretending that mastering the rules is the same as mastering the task.

I wasn’t much interested in National Grammar Day (and completely forgot about it on the 4th) because I preferred the idea of a National Clarity Day, but posts like McIntyre’s made it worthwhile.

Communication, English, John McIntyre, language, National Clarity Day, National Grammar Day, Writing

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