Grammarians generally split into two camps, prescriptivists and descriptivists. A prescriptivist tells you to follow the rules, much as a physician urges you to exercise, stop smoking, and lose ten pounds. (Okay, twenty. But who’s counting?) A descriptivist explains how people actually speak and write. As a retired English teacher and the author of a number of grammar books, I have strong ties to prescriptive grammar. Without standards of expression, meaning often sails off the cliff of comprehensibility. Take a look at this sign:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I get that the store wants to associate shop and save, though you could make the case that customers save more by declining to shop altogether. But how do you shop for free bakeware? This sign may be a promotion — buy a certain amount of food and the store will present you with the pan to cook it in — or it may be something else. The language is so mangled that the meaning is lost. Same thing here:

 

 

When everything is up for grabs, words lose meaning. Sign- and ad-writers know this very well, as do politicians.

On the other hand, rigid rules kill creativity. Language can’t — and shouldn’t — be preserved in amber. I used to fume when I saw disinterested, which traditionally means “unbiased or neutral,” in a sentence where uninterested was clearly indicated. But I’ve given up. Just as the definition of nice evolved from “neat and exact” to “friendly and kind,” disinterested has come to mean “not interested.” That’s how people use the word, and most readers or listeners understand. Those who insist on uninterested have lost the battle. Time to move on.

But I can’t give up completely on prescriptive grammar, and not just because I sell grammar books. Standard English — language that follows currently accepted rules — opens doors to careers that require formal expression. To tell someone trying to wedge a toe on a higher rung of the socio-economic ladder that prescriptive grammar is a totalitarian invention is not helpful. Citizens of the reality-based community know that “me and him are working on that case” is not something an attorney should say — well, not an attorney hoping to keep the job.

Yet I love this sign, despite the fact that it breaks the rules:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thought of patrons of this bar enjoying mingle is just too much fun to edit out. Not to mention the image of a couple dancing to the beat of a football pass or a smartly executed bunt down the third-base line.

So I’ll play for both teams, and console myself with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idea that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” What grammarian could oppose a principle containing the word hobgoblin? Not this one.