freedom

and every man did that which was right in his own eyes...

I am a copyeditor. Which means that I am maddeningly nitpicky about the clarity and unambiguity of the speech and writing of other people. I must try very hard to refrain from telling people when they’ve confused me by using a nominative case pronoun when they meant to use an objective case. And I shriek when people pronounce “nuclear” as “nu-kyu-lar.”

But lest you label me The Grammar Gestapo, let me be quick to assert that I’m actually a relativist, and at times an anarchist, when it comes to editorial things. True, I snap and snarl at the sight of misplaced modifiers (“I only worked 25 hours last week”) And yes, misspellings do merit tidal waves of red ink. And I refuse to believe that "sensuous" means the same thing as "sensual."

Btu all these errors are errors because they make the sentence less clear. They don’t communicate as precisely as is possible. Lots of the little grammatical rules you learned in 6th grade do not, in my opinion, matter one stinkin’ iota. It’s OK to use “impact” as a verb, regardless of what the nitpickier-than-thou style manuals say. Incomplete sentences—such as I have used several times already—are kosher. And it’s OK to recklessly split an infinitive.

These supposed errors that I've mentioned aren't really errors, because they don’t make the sentence less clear; in fact, they often communicate more clearly.

Here’s the rule: Yes, the rule that no one but my anarchist-nitpicker self really cares about. It is: As long as your sentence is clear, concrete, concise, you can do whatever you dern well please.