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Friday 5 December 2008

Life and Letters

Breaking the rules

‘The result is a minor masterpiece, so good that one can even forgive the author’s affected forays into demotic English (‘don’t’ and ‘wouldn’t’ for ‘did not’ and ‘would not’, etc.).’ Setting aside the writer’s mistake — ‘don’t’ being the contraction of “do not” rather than ‘did not’ — this sentence brought me up sharp , all the more so because it was the conclusion of Jonathan Sumption’s review in this magazine of John Guy’s book about Thomas and Margaret More; and Jonathan Sumption is not only a Spectator reviewer, but also one of our finest historians.

‘Affected forays into demotic English’ is a splendid magisterial put-down. Poor Mr Guy! Poor me too, now I think of it, for I see that in my most recent column, delivered before I had read Mr Sumption’s condemnation of ‘demotic English’ — that is, English as it is spoken - I was guilty of three such ‘affected forays’ in the first paragraph alone: one ‘hadn’t’, one ‘didn’t’ and one ‘wasn’t’. Should I blush with shame?

In my defence I might say that the style of this column is, generally, relaxed; that it doesn’t aspire to the dignity of History, as I suppose Mr Guy’s book does; that instead it is couched in conversational tones which may make the use of such contractions permissible. (And, indeed, I see that a ‘doesn’t’ has already slipped, in unconsidered fashion, into this paragraph.)

Then I might seek allies among other contributors to The Spectator. In the same issue as Mr Sumption‘s review, I am happy to find Matthew Parris and Paul Johnson both making similar ‘affected forays’ into the demotic. Mr Parris indeed does so on ten occasions in his article, while our sub has put a ‘don’t’ in its heading. As for Paul Johnson — surely an authority with whom few would argue? — he began the last paragraph of his essay with the observation: ‘But we can’t all be wise.’ How very true!

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