Prescriptivists Anonymous

February 7, 2007

Find that you have a language anger management issue? Thankfully, the brilliant minds over at Language Log* have created a 12 step program, just for people like you!

Each step is accompanied by a droll description and references to detailed, enlightening, and otherwise edifying readings that should put your mind at ease and assuage your wrath.

Covered are:

1. The infuriating issues of determiner constraints, especially those with "less" instead of "fewer" ... 2. Using and misusing the teenage register ... 3. Anger produced by the passive voice ... 4. Sensibly responding to Eskimo snow-word anger ... 5. Apology rage ... 6. Unbridled furor over the way acceptable usage is determined ... 7. How to get over feeling dissed by a stripped cleft sluice ... 8. Recovering from fear and loathing about unnecessary scientific terminology ... 9. Ridding yourself of anger over exasperating inferences ... 10. Wrath over amelioratives and pejoratives ... 11. Anger over omitted commas in speech ... 12. Sidestepping the taboo term syndrome, especially the F word, N word, C word, and K word.

* Language Log is one of the best blogs, nay, websites that the internet has to offer. If you harbor even a remote interest in language and/or linguistics, you can do little better than pop over there and gorge yourself upon the linguistic goodness.