Comma Chameleon

One might hypothesize that reading a book about the development of grammar just before sleep might be a good move to lull one into slumber. Rather, I find that I have been staying up later to finish the next chapter. Fascinating to read how language started to find more structure in the 1650s (only to lose it again in the 2000s with the gross acceptance of text [my words, not Lynch's]).

Advice on social manners and on speaking proper English emerged together in the 1700s as more people wanted to differentiate themselves from illiteracy and gain acceptance with the upper classes. Various champions of structure emerged, and one wonders what their wives must have thought of these men who were obsessed by proper use of commas and of spelling. [No love notes laying around certainly.]

As you scan your brain today for the proper word, consider placement of that semi-colon, and avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, know that these rules were not easily forged and that many a writer was a rule-breaker. The Lexicographer's Dilemma, indeed.

[Note: it is quite intimidating to write about grammar when one is a rule-breaker.]