Welcome, children—is everyone comfortable? Very well, then let’s begin.

I woke up this morning and thought, what the Web really needs is a pissy, recalcitrant bastard who has too much time on his hands, coupled with a strong misanthropic bent, to set the world straight on matters of grammar. I’m tired of picking up the paper and seeing mistakes. I’m tired of sitting through PowerPoint presentations riddled with bullet points that only begin to approximate the barest components of human language. I’m tired of newscasters saying an historic occasion and so-called “Internet journalists” who seem never to have discovered the shift key. I’m tired of coworkers who can’t spell and sportswriters who can’t write. And more than all those put together, I’m tired of the pansy-ass descriptive grammarians who seem to think this is all just okay.

I’m not saying language shouldn’t evolve and change. The very beauty of language is that it is mutable, malleable, and adaptable. People grow and die. Society changes. New things are invented and discovered for which there are no words. And language still manages to keep up. That’s all good stuff, and I don’t want to frustrate that process.

But it seems we sometimes fail to consider that, every now and then, a little resistance to change can be a good thing. It’s important to know who we are, but just as important to remember who we were and where we came from. Other than the ability to accessorize, language is the only thing that truly separates us from the animals. Let’s not lose sight of that, lest we become more like them than is already our wont.

Now, I won’t be pretentious enough to claim to be the world’s single greatest living authority on the grammar and style of the English language. To aspire to tread in the footsteps of Fowler, Strunk, White, Safire—and a host of others—is the sort of hubris which even I would not dare to adopt. However, if you, dear readers, wish to ascribe to me those lofty honors, I shall not say you nay.   —TWN