In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man of fashion never has recourse to proverbs, and vulgar aphorisms; uses neither favourite words nor hard words, but takes grea...t care to speak very correctly and grammatically, and to pronounce properly; that is, according to the usage of the best companies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To the "feminist" of both sexes, femininity is synonymous with the eternal female principle, connoting strength, integrity, wisdom..., justice, dependability, and a psychic power foreign and therefore dangerous to the plodding masculists of both sexes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexu...al tendencies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »