Not going forward

This is a brave book, quixotic even. Simon Heffer, an associate editor of the Daily Telegraph, believes English has a settled framework of grammar that is today often ignored. He deplores the growth in numbers of those who know nothing of correct usage and good style. Now he means to educate them.

Every one of us who gasps at the use of English in the papers each morning or harrumphs on turning on the radio will find much to applaud. In recent days I have recoiled at ‘Me and my family will do well’ (in The Times), ‘Sweden PM wins second term’ (Financial Times), ‘the deficit will reduce rapidly’ (FT again) and ‘in practice, they fall between cracks’ (International Herald Tribune). Every reference to the Liberal Democrat Party makes me wince. ‘Democrat’ is a noun. The adjective is ‘democratic’. Nothing, however, brings out the crotchet in me quite as much as the daily references on the radio, especially lofty-browed Radio 3, to ‘London’s Wigmore Hall’, ‘London’s South Bank’, ‘Edinburgh’s Usher Hall’ and so on, where the possessive apostrophe s is being made to do the work of the word ‘in’ rather than ‘of’.

But are we right to mind so much? My suspicion is that most of us believe that good English is what we learnt as children. A glance at the dictionary shows that the modern meanings of many common words go back no more than a couple of hundred years, if that. What pains us is unlikely to pain our children.

Heffer says he recognises that the language must change, but still seems to believe we must hang on to what we have and the way we have it now or, better still, had it yesterday.