Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:
Glixon, Niel
ARMED WITH A BLUNT OBJECT
WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH USAGE
Merriam-Webster, $18.95, 978 pp.
Niel Glixon
Merriam-Webster publishing a usage guide is rather like the Humanist Association...
...Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his dictionary, worried that "tongues...have a natural tendency to degenerate....[Let] us make," he urged, "some struggle for our language...
...By contrast, MWU constantly gives us this information-but nearly always for the crassest reasons...
...The cover blurb then is misleading when it describes Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (MWU) as "the definitive guide...
...They believe they can make a difference...
...Evans writes of "the incredibly arrogant assumption that we who have to do with observing and using speech in some way control it...
...For the rest, it offers aid and comfort to the enemy.omfort to the enemy...
...If you seek its help in deciding between "different from" and "different than," you find a puzzling statement that both forms "have been in standard use since the 16th and 17th centuries...
...It has the information but balks at offering guidance...
...Adequacy...
...So, if you want a usage guide that humbly "follows on," MWU is your book of choice...
...They complain, for example, of the school-marms of the last century who persuaded generations of writers that they must never split an infinitive nor use "between" with more than two objects...
...On the contrary, they want to make it plain from the start...
...All of these writers, while recognizing the power of "the masses" in determining usage, do not surrender to the juggernaut...
...This indifference is the rock on which the entire enterprise founders...
...And all we do, ultimately, is follow on...
...If, on the other hand, you want a book that truly guides you to usages that careful writers prefer, you are stuck with MWU's aging predecessors: Fowler, of course, and Evans, Follett, and Bernstein...
...But the fundamental objection to Mer-riam-Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary had not been that it would make the user a social pariah but that its canonization of dubious usages would lead to slovenly prose, as opposed to supple, efficient, logical, sensible, even beautiful prose...
...But in fact careful twentieth-century users consistently prefer "different from...
...But serious writers do not want the reader to have to "discover" their meaning...
...not a prestige form...
...MWU's editors, instead of sidestepping value judgments, might have made them confidently, armed with Merriam's incomparable data base...
...Avoiding clear recommendations accords with the editors' philosophy...
...ARMED WITH A BLUNT OBJECT WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH USAGE Merriam-Webster, $18.95, 978 pp...
...The masses control speech...
...But all of this is undermined by the dogma Merriam shares with so many linguists: that the trends of usage are inexorable, and no self-appointed guide can deflect them...
...The usual reason given for avoiding such constructions is clarity, but in most cases the meaning can readily be discovered...
...Such judgments are distasteful to many of our fraternity, but judgments of value are sometimes inevitable...
...True, MWU will be important to the usage scholar...
...Nearly thirty years have passed since the "Great Debate" over the third edition of Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary, compiled along similar principles: no judgments, just the facts, ma'am...
...In recent years, a few of these "descriptivists" have ventured to defy the party line, although with comical wariness: "To apply our studies to popular concerns may even involve us in making [gasp!] judgments of value-indeed, it will almost certainly do so...
...be prepared to catch a little flak...
...In the end, MWU's editors do not attach any importance to such careful writing...
...This is not a criterion that ever makes its appearance in MWU...
...tends to mark the speaker and writer as socially and educationally inferior...
...you are not likely to impress the boss, the teacher, or the job interviewer...
...Drawing on Merriam's vast files, MWU adduces dozens of citations to support any contested usage, and it addresses the arguments of commentators...
...But you may infer it from their approval of a statement by Bergen Evans, co-author of another usage guide...
...Though possessed of a great weapon, it sits out half the battles...
...We don't...
...Not only are they right...
...Whatever MWU's shortcomings, no criticism can gainsay this thousand-page achievement...
...Its critics had one major complaint, that the dictionary failed "to give the information that would enable the reader to decide which usage he wants to adopt," as Dwight Macdonald put it...
...Niel Glixon Merriam-Webster publishing a usage guide is rather like the Humanist Association publishing a catechism...
...What then is MWU's criterion for approval...
...Merriam's editors concede the point implicitly...
...For each usage that the purist would scorn, MWU issues a supercilious warning: "its unfamiliarity will cause eyebrows to be raised...
...After discussing dangling modifiers- one of the worst vices of the careless writer-MWU decides they are really OK...
...MWU offers precious little guidance, and what it does offer is questionable...
...They might have instructed their readers in actually improving the language...
...it would hardly help to promote a "definitive guide...
...The wary scholar here is John Algeo of the University of Georgia...
...Not MWU...
...MWU's complaints are perfectly valid-and they prove that someone besides the masses can influence usage...
...From now on, no serious usage critic will be able to tackle a topic without consulting this volume...
...This they are not so foolish as to expound straightforwardly...
Vol. 116 • September 1989 • No. 16
