On Language; Shades of Gray/Grey (Published 1989) (2024)

HOW DO YOU SPELL the color (achromatic, but it's still a color) created by mixing black and white? Is it >grey or >gray?

''Both spellings are correct and common,'' advises the new Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, which at $18.95 is one of the great bargain books of our time. ''In American English, the preference is for >gray, but >grey is also widely used. The British have a very definite preference for >grey.''

Preference is fine in discussing pronunciation (PREF-er-a-ble is preferred to pre-FER-a-ble, but the latter isn't a mistake), but I don't go for that preferential wishy-washiness when it comes to spelling. Here's how tough-guy orthographers, unafraid of taking black-and-white positions, handle the shade in question: if you're American, spell it >the color gray; if you're British, spell it >the colour grey. That's my >judgment; if I were British, that would be my >judgement.

Of course, I'm being prescriptive, laying my opinion on you because we have this tacit agreement that I know best about usage. The reason you go along with my ukases, diktats and pronouncements - most of the time - is that you don't have the time to break your head over what's the latest trend on the spelling of >grey. Nor do you have the inclination to agonize over the worthiness of preserving a distinction between >masterful (domineering) and >masterly (skillful), or to puzzle out why >the reason is that is In and >the reason is because is Out. You figure we language mavens are paid to have our shootout at the Correct Corral and then to pass along the words and spellings left standing.

That's not the attitude at Merriam-Webster, where they've been publishing since 1831. Those guys are reporters of language, not columnists about language - descriptivists, not prescriptivists. They know that Noah Webster tried to straighten out the inconsistent and confusing spelling of the English language in his early 19th-century works, and remember that he failed miserably. Like good democratic politicians, these lexicographers and usagists have learned that the best way to get along in the language dodge is to go along with the native speakers. They're in love with Norma Loquendi.

This is by way of introducing you to the best-researched, most readable, illustrative, sensible but often wrongheaded book about the choices we make in the way we use the language since Henry W. Fowler's classic Modern English Usage. Frederick C. Mish, editorial director of Merriam-Webster, and E. Ward Gilman, editor of Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, have produced one of the great books on language in this generation, but in so doing frequently raise a standard to which all those who hate standards can repair.

The >anxious/eager distinction, for example, is dismissed as ''a shibboleth.'' Although some of us like to use >anxious to signify ''worried'' and >eager to mean ''desirous,'' W.D.E.U. (along with Fowler) pooh-poohs this. ''Anyone who says that careful writers do not use >anxious in its 'eager' sense,'' it opines, ''has simply not examined the available evidence,'' which it amply lays out.

I accept the evidence and reassert the shibboleth. If you're hot to trot and express this as ''anxious to go,'' you'll have a lot of company, but many of us who will refrain from correcting you won't respect you in the morning. Certainly many people, and many good writers, use >anxious when they mean >eager; I say when you mean >eager, use >eager, and save >anxious for when you're worried.

How do you like your >media - singular, ''media is,'' or plural, ''media are''? According to W.D.E.U., ''The collective use . . . seems to be following the direction of development of >data,'' which is tending toward singular. But the roundheels have not yet won: ''>media is still being construed as a plural more often than it is either as a singular count noun or as a collective noun with a singular verb.''

Why do you suppose that bastion has not been overrun? Because some die-hards among us insist that when you speak of one medium, like ''the damnable scriveners'' of the press or ''the sensationalist boob-tubers'' of broadcast news, you are not speaking of all the media; >media are multifarious, and ''is'' not monolithic. I get the feeling that Mr. Gilman expects us to lose this one in the end; we'll show 'im. >Between v. >among? Say it isn't so: ''We suggest that in choosing between >among and >between,'' writes the usagist-reporter, using >between correctly in choosing between two, ''you are going to be better off following your own instincts than trying to follow someone else's theory of what is correct.'' W.D.E.U. cites the sainted Sir James Murray and Noah Webster as two of its authorities in this opinion, shows the mistake made by good writers throughout history and concludes: ''the unfounded notion that >between can be used of only two items persists, most perniciously, perhaps, in schoolbooks.''

Thank heaven for those pernicious schoolbooks. Hold the fort with Samuel Johnson, Goold Brown and me: >between two, separating sharply, and >among many, dividing loosely. It's cleaner. (Sell me one of those T-shirts that say, ''I'm the Mommy, that's why.'') (That say, not that says.) >Masterly v. >masterful? ''This distinction, however neat and convenient, is entirely factitious,'' declares the weathervane grammarian, using the forty-dollar word for ''artificial,'' condemning the nice distinction as ''the invention of H.W. Fowler in 1926.'' Ah, Fowler! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: usage hath need of thee. A parade of citations showing no distinction proves only that many users have not caught on to the improvement he suggested. This one is worth fighting for.

On pronunciation, I am more of a roundheel, and go along with allowing such variants approved by Mr. Gilman and crew as ''air'' for >err and ''TEM-pe-cher'' for >temperature. However, the notion that >government and >environment pronounced without an >n ''must be considered standard'' goes overboard. ''Guvvamint'' is prevalent, but >standard implies approval; next we'll be accepting ''gummint.'' Not in my liberry.

However, I find myself agreeing with many of the descriptive (I almost wrote ''permissive'') positions taken, such as allowing sentences that start with >however. The exhaustive entry on >ain't is masterly (nothing in this dictionary is masterful), and concludes: ''at times you will probably find >ain't a very useful word despite (or even because of) the controversy that surrounds its use.'' That's true, and my hat is off to the willingness of Merriam-Webster to refer to the uproar caused by the decision of the editor Philip B. Gove in 1961 to accept >ain't as standard in the Third Edition of their unabridged dictionary. (A cartoon of the time had a receptionist saying, ''Dr. Gove ain't in.'') >Hopefully is approved by the editors; I've caved in on that, leaving Jack Kilpatrick about the only defender left on the ramparts. And >It's me is considered ''reputable''; I'd say it has become preferred to the grammatically perfect ''It is I,'' which has become pedantic and stuffy. (The editors flirt with, but do not recommend, >it's as a possessive pronoun; I believe it has long been settled that >its is the only correct form.) The attitude in this major work is consistent: common usage dictates its recommendations for standard usage. My own attitude is inconsistent: I'll defend some distinctions, abandon resistance to new uses for old words (>contact as a verb is punchier than >get in touch with) and go into contortions to avoid >whom. As a result, I find W.D.E.U. a valuable and often wryly amusing reference to help me work out my own decisions.

Take its information, but don't necessarily take its advice. Usage ain't style.