A Word or Two Before You Go, by Jacques Barzun, is a description of the state of modern English. His thesis is that the majority of recent changes are not for the better.#

Preface#

A key argument against the notion that caring about language is pedantic:

Everybody would agree that it takes only a speck of soot in the eye to blot out the sun's glory or the beauty's face. But some people, forgetting it, will argue that to make a fuss about small points of usage is trivial, unworthy of a mind that can deal with high matters. [p. xi]

What Are Mistakes and Why#

An interesting story behind the occasional unprofessional prose in professional settings:

In writing, the effort to be friendly and informal seduces one into being chummy and slovenly. Writers suppose that their unbuttoned state will lure and coax the reader along. But the reader is not so easily won; he remains free and may not be "conciliated" (as if the situation were adversary) by a folksiness that is obvious pretense. Yet this pretense is found in most of the books that profess to advise and inform, just as verbal promiscuity, the language of the gutter, infects the stage and a large part of fiction. In the former genre, the message seems to be: "Though I know more than you--or how could I presume to inform?--don't think I feel superior. Let my jocular tone suggest my ever-friendly, grinning face." [p. 9]

The Positive Side of Negatives#

Barzun provides a reminder for why we should care about our writing and word choice, if we care about communicating at all.

Courtesy, obviously, is a by-product of the striving for Economy, but that second desirable end must also be sought by itself. It consists in keeping the reader and listener always in mind. They come first; they are our guests, and hence to be well treated. For nobody on earth has taken a pledge to read or listen to us. It therefore behooves us to make the encounter comfortable, indeed pleasant, as we would certainly try to do if it were a matter of entertaining acquaintances at home. [p. 14]

"It Makes No Sense"#

Barzun shows his regular cleverness and insistence on sensible word choice:

The truth is that if the words had not raised a clear image, did not make perfect sense, there could be no loud, unanimous objection. When a series of words makes no sense, the sole appropriate remark is, "What do you mean?" In other words, makes no sense is not synonymous with be sensible, and thus nine times out of ten makes no sense makes nonsense. [p. 22-23]

English As She's Not Taught#

A reiteration of the goal of writing:

Writing is embodied thought, and the thought is clear or muddy, graspable, or fugitive, according to the purity of the medium. Communication means one thought held in common. What could be more practical than to try making that thought unmistakable? [p. 33]

Often miscommunication is due to a simple misunderstanding of one word's meaning. A particularly extreme example:

Winston Churchill has recounted how Allied leaders nearly came to blows because of the single word table, a verb which to the Americans meant dismiss from the discussion, whereas to the English, on the contrary, it meant put on the agenda. This is an extraordinary instance, and the vagaries of those who pervert good words to careless misuse may be thought more often ludicrous than harmful. This would be true if language could digest anything and dispose of it in time. But language is not a kind of giant ostrich. Every defect in the language is a defect in somebody. [p. 29]

Tonier than Thou#

Our ordinary talk is already stuffed with vocables that flout common sense to no purpose except sounding uncommon--radiothon, sportagon, cargomation and other ungainly dinosaurs with -thon, -tron, -matic and auto-, hydro(a)-, or perma- at head and tail. A fact to ponder: For half a century the people and the schools have agreed that Greek and Latin were stone dead and of no earthly use. During the same half century the people and the unschooled have messed about with Greek and Latin scraps to replace good English words with hybrid forms. [p. 59]

Basic English: Whose Pidgin Is It?#

[Mr. Richards] believes that we should all read Plato for the sake of democracy. It is not clear to me how Plato's Spartan regime with class barriers and intellectual censorship is going to help keep up our spirits; and on general principles I suspect the elevation of any single book to the rank of scripture. In any case, Plato does not contain all that matters in political theory. The Greeks have not said the last word on any subject, however much we may admire what they did say. [p. 100]

For Us Readers' Sake#

If you have the book, or if you plan on getting it, I think the section at the back of this chapter is great, on page 152. You'll have to see it to understand. He makes an argument for using the hyphen in other places that between related words.

Mencken's America Speaking#

The most common argument against Barzun is addressed in this section:

All his confirms the popular superstition I spoke of, which is that by the continual addition of new words language "grows," that the more it grows the more "living" and hence the better it is, and that usage being the only test of life among words, no one has a right to prejudge its verdict. Hands off, therefore, when a new term appears. Intervention is pedantry. For example, Swift at the beginning of the eighteenth century made war on the word mob--a slang shortening of the high brow mobile vulgus. Today mob is a perfectly respectable word. Inference: Swift was a stuffed wig. More generally: to reprove any modern Americanism is nearly as bad as infanticide, and absolutely like tilting at a windmill.

What is wrong with these notions? In the first place, usage is not the simple thing it seems. Its effect is not only to establish words but also to change their qualities. With the passage of years, mob has become disinfected, renovated; it has killed off possible rivals, buried its sordid origins, and acquired proper connections. It is strictly not the same word that Swift disliked--as we can see when we compare it with another short form, say, rep (for reputation), which swift also condemned and which is just as tawdry now as then. [p. 157]

A great phrasing of the problem of jargon escaping the field of its definition:

To be sure, there have always been cant words, slang, and academic must that is precisely the point: they existed and were consciously neglected or attacked. Today we multiply their kind and wallow among them indiscriminately. [p. 160]

I stopped myself from writing the above sentence as: A great phrasing of the problem of local bindings escaping their scope.