Excursus

Language Log often writes about word rage—the irrational hostility to perceived misusage. Very often the prescribed usage is a stylistic preference elevated to the status of a grammatical rule. Mark Liberman has recently recommended that word rage might effectively be treated with cognitive therapy.

Perhaps we need to recognize another malady—typographic rage. Recently manifest not only in the “dumb quotes” backlash, but in John Gruber’s response as well:

These people should be issued IBM Selectrics and have their computers taken away.

Funny, even if an anger management issue.

Just as word rage may be treated by a course of cognitive therapy, the treatment might be applied as well to typographic rage. The measured discussion of the issue by the Ministry of Type was thus a welcome contribution. Unfortunately, many of the arguments advanced there don’t withstand scrutiny:

In the end, I would say that of course it is always preferable to use type correctly, but typography is the servant of meaning, not the master. If straight quotes, however much of a modern bastardisation of type they may seem, enhance the meaning of a piece (or if curved quotes would distract the reader), then you must use them. Otherwise, don’t.

Now, as a loyal Language Log reader, I am loathe to think of myself as a prescriptivist—even of a typographic stripe. Semantic drift is a reality. Linguistic and typographic conventions are subject to change. And that’s a good thing. Language and typography need to adapt to the changing needs of shifting social, economic, and technological realities. But what the Ministry of Type failed to demonstrate is the enchanced meaning allegedly incurred by the use of straight quotes. And without that, no case has been made for semantic drift in this instance.

One needn’t be a prescriptivist to fear zombies—persistent linguistic and typographic conventions intelligible only in the context of dead technologies and practices from which they arose.