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Apr. 18th, 2012 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficThe AP has approved "hopefully," and this article is kind of hilarious.
I was just listening to a lecture about how trying to impose logic on language is like trying to dry up the incoming tide with a towel, and "hopefully" came up. This was one I was actually taught in my copyediting class, and was really in fashion thirty years ago: That "hopefully" should only be used to mean in a hopful manner. But then, does supposedly mean "in a supposed manner"?
My favorite bit:
This, it is my life. Descriptivists FOREVAH!!!!
I was just listening to a lecture about how trying to impose logic on language is like trying to dry up the incoming tide with a towel, and "hopefully" came up. This was one I was actually taught in my copyediting class, and was really in fashion thirty years ago: That "hopefully" should only be used to mean in a hopful manner. But then, does supposedly mean "in a supposed manner"?
My favorite bit:
These are the battles that are fought daily between...prescriptivists, who believe that rules of language should be preserved at any cost, and descriptivists, who believe that word use should reflect how people actually talk.
“It was an unconscious mistake,” say the descriptivists.
“You mean subconscious.”
“Well, anyways — ”
“You mean anyway.”
“That begs the question. Why do you care about grammar so much?”
“No. It doesn’t! It doesn’t beg the question at all. It raises the question. It raises the question!”
“I’m going to beat you subconscious.”
This, it is my life. Descriptivists FOREVAH!!!!