And come to that, suggested?
Whoever writes the blurbs for the NYT's front page ought to sack up. How about saying what the article really says; e.g., Good writing need not be constrained by dictionary definitions?
The article would be better with some more examples, but it does offer something rare, to you, a decent person with your head on straight: the opportunity to agree with someone who writes for The Weekly Standard.
3 comments:
That ( http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/the-role-of-a-dictionary/?hp ) is, IMHO, some of the best writing about writing I've ever read. It just kicks the knees out from under the chiseled-in-stone idea of language that one often encounters from a selection of tightly constricted, often humorless pedants whose last line of defense (and often first...) is to pick at whatever peculiarities someone has chosen to include in a particular argument. And... than that, it really gets to the heart of one aspect of what a language really is.
Good writing can break rules.
Almost by definition.
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