I don't disagree with you completely, but that wording is pretty strong. Having rules does not in any way ensure anything. Often people read meaning into what others say from the tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. The word "great" obviously can have totally different meanings depending on how you say it. And a lot is even read from the situation. If a person cuts his finger and exclaims "Oh, great!" you will assume that it's meant negatively even if his pronunciation is wrong, i.e. he raises the tone of his voice at the end of the utterance.

And sometimes flaunting grammar rules is used to convey a certain message. A person saying "I ain't gonna take no s..t from you" conveys more aggressivity than someone who uses "any".

Also, the meanings of words (particularly adjectives) can change so quickly that dictionaries can't keep up with the changes (well, nowadays they probably can, but not traditionally). For example, when my grandmother used to say "it was a gay party," she meant something very different from how I'd understand it. And I suppose you could resist and say "gay should not be used to mean homosexual" but it would seem a bit Quixotic to me.

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As above, so below

True; I should have said "helps ensure." There are, as you say, places where tone is more important. However, if you said, say, "kumquat" in the same disparaging tone in which you said, "great," it would be pretty meaningless, simply because "kumquat" generally isn't understood as an expression of either approval or distaste. (Unless it happens to be a slang term no one's told me about!)

Flouting. But yes. ("Flaunting" is showing off. "Flouting" is ostentatiously ignoring.) And I certainly grant the principle, as evidenced by the fact that I, for example, will start a sentence with a conjunction, as I've done twice in this very paragraph. However, I think you have to know the rules first. For example, if you always say, "ain't going to take no" instead of "aren't going to take any," it's not particularly emphatic or agressive when you do in that context, simply because there isn't any additional force behind it. Do you see what I'm saying?

Well, English majors can be quixotic (wonderful word, isn't it?). However, I believe most of us have left the ramparts of "gay" long since; the only people I've heard fighting that particular battle aren't fighting it for particularly grammatical reasons, if you know what I mean. As to dictionaries, it's actually harder for at least the print ones to keep up, because language is shifting faster now than it used to. This is in no small part because of the atmosphere of permissiveness; check out the least of "common but not preferred" or simliarly phrased terms in any good dictionary.

I think I do get rather defensive about the whole thing, but think about this. Say you, too, had spent years studying language. You'd gone to college and spent not merely time but money examining intricacies of the English language. You know how commas work. And then someone comes along who doesn't even do a courtesy spell check before posting and tells you that it doesn't matter, because language changes, and you knew what they meant anyway, right?

As my best friend puts it, yes, I knew what they meant, but I feel a little ashamed of myself for it. (You will note, by the way, that I am one of the English majors fighting for "they" as a gender neutral third person singular term.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

In dutch it is:

fly·er (de ~ (m.), ~s)
1 wielrenner die uitblinkt in tijdritten
2 strooibiljet

To my surprise it has two meanings:
1. A cyclist who is very good in time trials
2. A brochure for "throwing" in bars etc.

We borrowed the word from the english language. To write "flier" would be confusing in dutch, because this is pronounced as "fleer".

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Not because it is easy, but because it is hard...

There is no way to happiness,
happiness is the way.

I understand that. Actually, I run into dilemmas like that just about every day. Because I'm one of those "English specialists" who live outside of the native countries, doing work either translating (which involves some interesting questions) or editing and teaching.

And when I'm editing, I often find myself thinking that I'm really doing two things. One is very admirable: making things easier to understand. But then the other thing is enforcing stylistic issues that I don't necessarily believe in. For example, if an author is writing for a journal that prefers the use of the "royal we" even by single authors, then I will go through a paper changing that. And of course, it's quite evident that in terms of accuracy or comprehension, there's no advantage at all to using "we" or "the author" rather than "I." It's simply a convention.

And actually, I personally avoid using "they" for the third person singular, though I think it's actually a good idea. It's just something I have a hard time doing. Maybe I need a 12-step program. . . I'd almost prefer using "it" as a neutral pronoun for humans and non-humans. It seems like something that Gollum might say. "It's a good little girl." But I think that most people would resist being called "it." Oh, well.

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As above, so below

That is the problem, yes. English does have a perfectly acceptable third person singular gender neutral pronoun, but people are so set on being clearly differentiated from, say, tables.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Then you are in a distinct minority, you should be proud.

I used to be something of a grammar Nazi, in the sense that I had trouble understanding people when they grossly misused the language, and I constantly asked for clarification. My friends thought I was just being a jerk, but it was more a matter of actually learning what we were taught in school since we were six years old and applying it in real life. When we were very young, from four to eight years old, most of the kids in my neighbourhood could use the word "whom." Then all the rest moved away, and it was pretty much just me left.

Many of the problems involved ambiguous phrases or phrases that didn't mean what the speaker intended. I think that most people don't even recognize when those cases occur, but when I hear a sentence with a "who" instead of "whom," for example, it still confuses me for a moment, especially when it gives a second possible meaning to the sentence. It's even worse when someone says "whom" but really means "who." I've long since given up correcting people (except for my little sister, as it is my duty to torment -- I mean, educate -- her regarding such things), but I'm still very much aware of it when I hear a sentence which might have multiple meanings.

My gender-neutral third person singular pronoun is "he." It's neutral, because it's grammatically correct and therefore as non-sexist as the person saying it. Someone once corrected the grammar on one of the printer instruction sheets in the computer lab, crossing out "they" and writing "he." There was an uproar from a very vocal women's group, with speeches in the agora and everything, until I stood up after they were done ranting and read from a style manual stating that it was grammatically correct. Of course, I neglected the usage clauses that supported the "they" position (which I think is quite silly -- sorry), but it did end the debate, for the most part.

I think the instruction sheets were later re-worded to avoid singular pronouns entirely, and everyone got back to worrying about computer science instead.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

Which I think is the better option in formal writing in the first place, and is, in fact, the advice I give in my private grammar lessons. (Specifically, I advise to only use singular third person pronouns if the object is known.)

However, I think the stance is that the fact that "he" is correct is sexist. I happen to agree with such a stance, especially given that there have been, in the past, certain implicit assumptions wherein "she" was used instead, such as referring to those who cleaned or cared for children. In those cases, it was considered okay for "she" to be the third person singular unknown, but in no other.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

There's a variant I spotted on a t-shirt (when, sadly, I was effectively destitute).

"The English language does not borrow from other languages. It lures them into dark alleys and mugs them, then goes through their pockets for loose grammar"

However dark the sentiment, it's not terribly inaccurate.

And, with a tip of the hat to my favorite comma-hunter:
"Rules are made to be broken, but only when there is sufficient reason to do so."
(I've been unable to attribute this - there are dozens of variations all over the 'net)

Yeah, that was the one I was thinking of.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

I'm always amused by that quote. It seems that many English speakers think their language is the only one like that.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

It's not, of course--Japanese borrows quite a lot from English, for one--but it has been doing it to a great extent for a thousand years and more. What's more, it is more likely to borrow words for things it already has words for than any other language, hence the apparently uniquely English invention of the thesaurus.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

It amuses me no end that the word thesaurus has no real synonyms.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Not as one word, no. But "dictionary of synonyms" gets used sometimes, and that's a compound noun that ought to appear in a thesaurus.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Japanese also borrows a lot of words that are already in use, simply because it's cool. If you grab the Japanese MSN messenger "knock" add-ons (they are little animations you can send to people -- I hate them, but people send them to me all the time), you'll see that 90% of the words displayed are actually English loan-words. "Harou" instead of "hello." "San kyu" instead of "thank you." They have perfectly good words already, but English is exotic-sounding.

It's not just English: it's as though every time they invaded China or Korea over the last 1500 years or so, they came back with a new set of grammatical rules, a new alphabet, or a revamped vocabulary.

Japan is the Borg of modern cultures, minus the whole universe domination complex.

Is the thesaurus uniquely English? A Japanese thesaurus would be very nice, except that one would have to be very careful about the connotations of using a synonym. In English, one can usually get away with using a word that doesn't mean exactly what is intended, but in Japanese, it's likely to cause offense. I wonder if such a thing exists. I've seen a word processor plug-in (so at least the language is rich enough to support the concept), but I haven't encountered a printed one.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

Bill Bryson, in The Mother Tongue, claimed it was, but I haven't checked to see if he's right. Because, you know, effort.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I grew up being taught that 'he' is correct for any non-gender-specific third person reference.

"They", I'm afraid, drives me right round the bend - especially when used to denote a single individual (I include 'their' as well).

One of the more common tooth-gritters for me is sports announcers... variations on "everybody [in the crowd] got to their feet" just plain drives me nuts. Maybe I'm just old and set in my ways, but that kind of mis-use is as abrasive as an oxymoron, and nowhere near as funny.

Yes, in fact, I DO try to follow these rules in my colloquial speaking - even with my children (and yes, I call them kids - like goats, they eat everything in sight)

I use "they" as third person gender neutral singular. I find it less grating than assuming everyone's a "he."

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"