The Lexicographer's Rules

“Let me decline to enlist on either side of this concocted war of the -ists, and speak instead on behalf of a third group: the Rational People. We believe in making value judgements about language use: some writers are better than others, and even good writers sometimes make poor choices and outright mistakes. But we also believe in the value of facts, both about linguistic history and about current usage. We’re unwilling to accept the assertions of self-appointed linguistic authorities about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ if these assertions conflict with the way that the best writers use the language. We understand that vernacular forms of English are not faulty or degenerate approximations to the formal standard—instead, they’re just, well, vernacular. We’re willing to accept, as Horace was, that new words and structures, and new uses of old words and structures, can be a valuable addition even to the most formal linguistic registers. In a nutshell: we don’t worship our own prejudices, and we’re more curious than censorious."—"Amid this vague uncertainty, who walks safe?” Mark Liberman, Language Log.

“To be brutally frank with you, abuse is like beauty. It’s in the eyes of the beholder.…A loud voice, anything, can be called abuse.”—"For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews” by Ian Urbina.

I am consolidating all of the feeds for this site into one. That’s why you might be seeing more material than before.

Because the citations feed was added to the site well after the entries-only feed, thousands of subscribers were not aware that the citations exist. They’re often as interesting and as valuable as the full entries, so I consider it best to merge the feeds, so that everyone is receiving the same content: full entries, unresearched citations, and blog entries like this one.

Update: A sufficient number of people have expressed regret over these changes that I am compelled by the unavoidable desire to please to revert the feeds to their previous form. This should happen within the next couple of days.