Language is both a natural phenomenon and a science. It evolves from earlier forms, and it's rules are descriptive rather than proscriptive, like physics. But unlike physics, the rules change. More like biology, then, especially ostriches and bats. The point is language rules never apply 100% of the time. And there may be a time when a rule ceases to exist altogether. Will/shall usage used to be a big deal grammatically, but when was the last time you used shall except for a conscious effect?
Ambrose Bierce, of The Devil's Dictionary fame, was a usage critic on top of being a journalist and satirist. In his 'blacklist', Write It Right, he lists his grammatical pet peeves. Last year, Jan Freeman, a modern usage critic, "appraised and annotated" Bierce's famous list. I stumbled on this book in Barnes and Noble and jumped for joy that my favorite cynic had another volume to add to my library that I hadn't previously heard of. I didn't expect my entire view of how language evolves to be shaped by this book, but I am now an aspiring usage maven.
Most of Bierce's entries are, for various reasons, now obsolete. Bierce resists slang, particularly anything commercial (paying your dues) or American, which was seen as less refined than British English by American scholars of his day. And many of his peeves appear to be unique to him and have no basis in traditional grammar rules. Bierce spends most of his time trying to pin a single exact meaning for each term and to expurgate all other meanings under the banner of clarity. (See first example.) Each entry lists the word Bierce is banning, usually as a substitute for another word—wet for wetted (Bierce believes in regular past tense forms ending in -ed.) Next he provides an example in quotes (which sometimes illustrates something entirely different). And if he felt it necessary, a diatribe on what is wrong with the example. I have listed Bierce's entry in bold following the style of the book. Following each entry, Freeman describes the history of the usage Bierce condemns—what etymological dictionaries say, usage by creditable authors, and how the argument stands today. Frequently she analyzes Bierce's reasoning and makes fun of him. A very few entries—Authoress and Former—get wholesale agreement from Freeman. Here are my favorite examples, illustrating Bierce's whim and Freeman's wit and wisdom:
Space for Period. "A long space of time." Space is so different a thing from time that the two do not go well together.
If Bierce had been reading physics, instead of news of the war in Mexico, he might have heard of "the space-time manifold of relativity" before he disappeared around the end of 1913. If he had lived another few years, the OED would have published the S volume, showing that space had meant "duration, period" even before it meant "extent, area," and that both senses were current in the 14th century. Bierce being Bierce, he would probably have concluded that the 14th century needed a good editor; but "space of time" is so natural that even Bierce, not surprisingly, used expressions like "a moment's space" in his published work.
Over for About, In, or Concerning. "Don't cry over spilt milk." "He rejoiced over his acquittal."
Over had been used in this way since Old English, but what was good enough for King Alfred, William Caxton, Shakespeare, and Hardy was apparently too imprecise for Ambrose G. Bierce.
Finally, some vocab you'll run across in this book that made this non-maven's head spin:
solecism— a nonstandard or ungrammatical usage
neologism— a new word, meaning, usage or phrase
maven— a person who has special knowledge or experience, an expert
pleonasm— the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy
shibboleth— a common saying or belief with little current meaning or truth
lexicography— the writing, editing, or compiling of dictionaries
etymon— an earlier form of a word in the same language or an ancestor language
