Thank you for having me (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Federico Escobar]

Bill wrote:

But this is just my pet peeve, and as a peeve, it is probably not
> subject to an analytical reduction of the literal phrase.  Most of good
> manners is done the way it done because that is the way it should be
> done.  The arguments against proscriptivism in language may well apply
> here as well.  But if it's good enough for Miss Manners, it's good
> enough for me.


The connection here is so strong, in fact, that it's no surprise that Lynne
Truss, who became widely known because of her often prescriptivist book on
punctuation (*Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Guide to
Punctuation* [2003]), then went on to write directly about manners (*Talk to
the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life* [2005]).

F.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org