Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Reading Writing About Writing

Alternate Title: Latin Is Dead, Alivey English!

Today on boston.com Erin McKean takes critics of the English language to task. In a nutshell: Embrace English evolution.


...if all these words look wordish, sound wordish, and act wordish, why are they all hedged about with the namby-pamby "I know it's not a real word" disclaimers? (Note: wordish is a perfectly good word.)


They shouldn't be, I agree. I make up words all the time, right here.

Like, "besotted," or "interrobang."


It's a clever little op/ed and I found the payoff right here:


Whenever I see "not a real word" used to stigmatize what is (usually) a perfectly cromulent word, I wonder why the writer felt the need to hang a big sign reading "I am not confident about my writing" on it.


-t

1 comment:

craziasian said...

i am a huge supporter of wordish words