I was out of comission with a really sore throat (I woke up croaking) yesterday to hold forth on issues that were, well, being held forth on by others, elsewhere. In other words, the universe of discourse didn't suffer in any fashion due to my brief absence.

Joseph Epstien in yesterday's WSJ brings to attention of all the language grouches the work of The Vocabula Review. He writes this about VR:

"The Vocabula Review is run on the prescriptivist principle that there are correct and incorrect uses of words; the descriptivists hold that any language used by the majority is automatically acceptable English. "Whatever!" might be the descriptivists' motto; "Not in my house you don't" that of the prescriptivists.

The Vocabula Review, in fact, has two mottoes: "A society is generally as lax as its language" and "Well spoken is half sung." Mr. Fiske believes that honest language is elegant language. His online magazine is neither a forum for prescriptivism nor for his prejudices, but deals extensively with the endless oddities and richness of language.

Mr. Fiske's own characteristic tone is perhaps best caught in his Dimwit's Dictionary. In that 400-page work a vast body of words and phrases are shown up for the linguistic ciphers they are. He has established a number of categories for "Expressions That Dull Our Reason and Dim Our Insight." These included grammatical gimmicks, which are expressions (such as "whatever," "you had to be there") that are used by people who have lost their powers of description; ineffectual phrases ("the fact remains," "the thing about it is," "it is important to realize") used by people to delay coming to the point or for simple bewilderment; infantile phrases ("humongous," "gazillions," "everything's relative"), which show evidence of unformed reasoning; moribund metaphors ("window of opportunity") and insipid similes ("cool as a cucumber"); suspect superlatives ("an amazing person," "the best and the brightest"), which are just what the category suggests; torpid terms ("prioritize," "proactive," "significant other"), which are vapid and dreary; not to mention plebeian sentiments, overworked words, popular prescriptions, quack equations, and wretched redundancies."

I always knew that I inhabited some dark closet, and now thanks to Mr. Epstien, I can finally come out under the label for people with my tendencies: "prescriptivist". I went to the VR page in order to hobnob with other prescriptivists but sadly most VR content, other than a handful of sample articles, can only be accessed by subscribers.

Of the freebies, I liked the essay titled "DisenYOUGUYSing American English" best, mainly because I have been using some of the issues discussed in it to determine how I tip wait-staff. Those who serve with the refrain "you guys enjoy" to a company with an age spread of 25-75 years get points taken off, and those who transgress even farther in this fashion when serving a mixed company (men and women) get bumped further down the tipping scale. I am all for Whitman-ic brotherhood, and am as anti-subaltern as one can get but that "you guys enjoy" sends me into Ignatius J. Reilly-ish paroxysms on the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry".

On a related note, Ms. Square Peg in her blog post gives excellent (and hilarious) advice on how not to dress up one's online dating profile(s). So "pliss be minding your langbhage" for it still matters in some quarters.