Member-only story
The Curmudgeons are Alright
I have always been a language curmudgeon. I’ve always taken the elitist view that people ought to be able to speak at least one language correctly, and have found myself immoderately angry when they do not. Misplaced apostrophes make me froth at the mouth. Reading that a play will be staged “thru” such-and-such a date gives me palpitations.
It’s a sickness, for sure. I’ll give you one dramatic example of how desperate it is. When I was sixteen, I was in love. He lived in a different town, so in those days — before the internet and when telephone conversations were anything but private — we wrote each other letters. He was smart and funny and handsome (and in line for a title and ownership of a vineyard), and truly the only thing “wrong” with him was that he misspelled some words, used some errant punctuation.
So I decided to remedy that for him. Yes: I can feel you cringing. But I did it. I corrected his love letters. In red ink. And sent them back to him. I didn’t have a clue; I was delusional, lost in my dreams of becoming a Great Writer; I thought he’d really want to know the correct way to write.
