Conventions Are Silly

First off, if you've got about twenty minutes, be sure to watch Steven Pinker giving a great talk on the conventions of language in writing. He's a brilliant psychologist, a highly accomplished writer, and his hair reminds me of a cocker spaniel. 

He articulated something I've been thinking for years now, but couldn't quite put my finger on. Conventions are totally made up. 

I think that if you're going to attempt to get good at something, you should see how the experts got to be the experts. I wanted to become a better writer, so I spent a while reading about what others writers - good writers, had done. I remember coming across a list of ten tips for writing by Jonathan Franzen and being horrified.


"Never use the word "then" as a ­conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page."

Says who? 

In Pinker's talk above he makes a point of stressing that there aren't any shadowy grammatical arbiters hiding behind the curtain. No one guides the evolution of language but the language users. You might think it's the lexicographers behind it though, right? - the men and women who archive current language in dictionaries. Nope. Lexicographers survey current trends in language and throw them into their dictionaries. It's that simple. There are no gatekeepers. Not really. 


Don't get me wrong. I don't think we should throw out punctuation and grammar; it's there for a reason. Clear and concise writing would be impossible without the correct tools. But there's a difference between a functional rule and a traditional one. Spare a thought for the swathes of non-native English speakers trying to get their head around spellings like yacht, or cough, or knight. 


I taught English for a few years. When confronted in the classroom about these kinds of spelling oddities, there's little else to do but shrug, apologise on behalf of your language, and insist that English is absolutely mental. Especially British English, I'm afraid. 

Language is fluid. Nobody is conducting the orchestra. If they claim they are, if they assert some god-given right to quash a new word of yours, or step on a literary flourish, chalk it up to a superiority complex.


As I said, this isn't a call to abandon punctuation and good grammar. Our language is beautiful, one of the richest in the world. But it got that way - as with everything interesting on the planet - through mutation. 


As the old adage goes, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.