But one thing that (slightly) dimmed my Christmas cheer was the realization that I am losing the battle against adverbial "everyday." Now as a linguist, I am not a prescriptivist; language has to be allowed to grow and change, because it will anyway, whether you allow it or not. Linguists describe what happens; they don't dictate what should happen.
HOWEVER. Descriptivist that I am, I still think think, as a man of letters, that the resources of a language that lead to clarity of communication should be both used and preserved. That's why my heart sunk when I entered a store that advertised LOW PRICES EVERYDAY.
Now you and I both know that it should have read LOW PRICES EVERY DAY. The single word everyday is an adjective, to be used attributivally: "everyday prices." The phrase "every day" is an adverb. This useful distinction is disappearing.
In a previous chapter of my life, I was an editor/proofreader at an ad agency here in Cincinnati. I fought the "everyday" battle... well, every day. It got people pretty riled up sometimes.
AD EXEC: Why won't you sign off on this job? The client is complaining.
ME: It's got a mistake in it, see? It says everyday here, one word, but it should be two. Everyday, one word, is an adjective, but you want the adverb here, there should be a space ...
AD EXEC (shrilly): Nouns! Verbs! Adjectives! Adverbs! Am I supposed to diagram every ***ing sentence in the ad?
ME: Couldn't hurt.
Now it feels like no one is on the watch. Maybe it's time for the proofreader to hand over the job permanently to the linguist.
lazy thinking abounds these days I'm afraid.
ReplyDelete> Descriptivist that I am, I still think think,
ReplyDelete> as a man of letters, that the resources of a
> language that lead to clarity of communication
> should be both used and preserved. That's why
> my heart sunk when I entered a store...
Speaking of preserving resources that lead to clarity, what ever happened to the simple past tense "sank"?