20-06-2008, 07:26 PM
At the risk of inviting tersely worded letters from readers, I would like to pay tribute to the renegades of our society, the outlaws who buck the system and break all the rules - of grammar.
[...]
Language has rules to make communication clearer and more precise, he argued as we drove to dinner on Thursday night. Well, I said, as we dashed into a pub in the rain, does anyone see a sign saying "juicy kiwi's 50 cents" really think that the sign is announcing that each of those juicy kiwi fruits possess 50 cents? And, I argued as I reconstructed this debate in a way that was more flattering to my side of the argument the next day, what about when bad language makes the meaning clearer?
http://tinyurl.com/3onxvr
[...]
Language has rules to make communication clearer and more precise, he argued as we drove to dinner on Thursday night. Well, I said, as we dashed into a pub in the rain, does anyone see a sign saying "juicy kiwi's 50 cents" really think that the sign is announcing that each of those juicy kiwi fruits possess 50 cents? And, I argued as I reconstructed this debate in a way that was more flattering to my side of the argument the next day, what about when bad language makes the meaning clearer?
http://tinyurl.com/3onxvr