It’s a cartoon by William Haefeli regarding Mother’s Day. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons of recent years.
That’s the one, thank you! 
I looked for it in my collection of cartoons, mostly from the New Yorker, and missed it because I was looking for something related to Father’s Day. Turns out I already had it, filed under “Two Mommies” back in May 2011 – older than I thought! The caption is much better than my garbled recollection of it! 
Nonsense, nonsense, and nonsense. The modern English language is the envy of the world. It is larger, wider, more varied, more comprehensive, more inventive, and more subtle than any other language has ever been. Of course, some changes are bad - how could it be otherwise? The naysayers who decry them cherrypick a few obvious clunkers from the tens of thousands of improvements that change brings to each new generation.
English grammar and spelling has been inconsistent since about, oh, whenever you want you assign for the beginning. Even being generous I can’t figure out what you think you’re saying here. Spelling is manifestly more consistent since the wide availability of dictionaries, and that’s the 18th and 19th centuries for British and American English. Since the rate of graduation from high school failed to exceed 50% until after WWII, I doubt that usage was ever better among the entire population, no matter what ridiculous fairy tale past of “good” language you might believe. And English teachers weren’t better either: my rule of thumb is that anything anyone claims in a thread was taught to them by an English teacher is wrong. (Yes, I also paired “anyone” with “them” in that sentence. You’re a fool if you don’t.)
You’re also dead wrong that “style” is a synonym, let alone euphemism, for popular usage. Style is that part of the language that is not covered by grammar. If “in-store” is not a word, then you don’t know the definition of word. Media, for mass communications, is listed in the OED as singular since 1923, the first appearance in that sense. Here’s another rule of thumb. Anyone who claims to correct English in a thread by talking about what is “wrong” will know too little about it to be worth listening to.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was ahead of you all. He didnt use apostrophes and urged that others shouldnt use them either. He apparently has company.
That tirade is a curious jumble of entirely incorrect assertions and a misunderstanding of my point. I don’t deny that the English language is the richest in the world and that it continuously evolves; far from denying it, I have boundless admiration for great writers who skillfully push its limits. They may bend the rules of grammar in ways that would get your knuckes rapped by a third-grade English teacher, but in their capable hands it becomes art. A great writer can make printed words a thing of beauty that can move us and delight us, and you won’t find me quibbling about his grammar or punctuation.
The problem is that the average person isn’t such a craftsman of the art; he’s more likely to be a marginally literate moron who inserts or deletes apostrophes at random and doesn’t know the difference between “then” and “than”, or a business person spouting the fashionable business slang of the day. It’s one thing to observe that language evolves, and to admire a creative turn of phrase in the hands of a master, but it’s quite another to infer that language evolves in useful ways through ignorant misuse. And this is where you make your blunder. Ignorant misuse isn’t a matter of “style”, it’s a matter of being wrong. These abuses don’t add to the richness of the language or its expressiveness or clarity, they detract from it. When writing is bad enough it starts to become quite literally incomprehensible. You may think that’s progress. I don’t.
On this particular subject I’ve expressed my belief that there’s a good and objective reason that “Father’s Day” is written as a singular possessive, and I’ll say again that if the apostrophe was dropped entirely as you predict will happen, then it will be reduced to the same collective meaning as something like “Veterans Day”, and we will have lost an important nuance of meaning. Robbing a language of its nuances of expression isn’t evolution, it’s regression.
I would be wrong if I had said that. I didn’t. I said that was the incorrect sense that you were using the word “style”.
If killtheapostrophe.com isn’t intentionally satirical, it’s a pretty good self-parody. I think I’m going to join these guys. 
Open a Manual of Style some day. You may find that style is the particulars of where an apostrophe is or isn’t placed. This cannot be “right” or “wrong” because it is not grammar. People can, deliberately or accidentally, flout your prescriptive notions and change the language to suit themselves. Useful changes are adopted widely and picked up by “good” authors, which I have defined often in these threads as working professionals, whether they are masters of literary prose or not. The words you take for granted are themselves the results of natural selection among thousands that did not last.
Anyone acquainted with the history of language would know that people just like you have been denouncing the horrifying barbarism of present-day language every day for the past several centuries. If your logic made a lick of sense, language would be a dying, impoverished, muttonheaded abomination after hundreds of years of such abuse. And yet it isn’t. QED.
Bullshit. Grammar is not the only aspect of the English language governed by rules. There are rules of spelling. There are rules of punctuation – including rules on the use of the apostrophe. An organization’s style manual (or any of the generic style manuals) is primarily concerned with stylistic consistency across an organization or publication, not with reformulating the basic rules of written English. Like the New Yorker style guide’s infamous obsession with the diaeresis, these truly are matters of style and not ignorant violations of correct usage.
Yes, people can, and almost all the time that they do “change the language to suit themselves”, they make themselves less comprehensible. The whole basis of language is an agreed-upon set of rules to facilitate communication; that’s why language exists. With very very few exceptions indeed, every time someone flouts those rules, clarity of communication suffers. And incidentally, I don’t know who these “working professionals” are that you refer to, but if you mean journalists, some journalists have been the worst perpetrators of language abuse I’ve come across. I’ll repeat what I said before. These abuses don’t add to the richness of the language or its expressiveness or clarity, they detract from it. When writing is bad enough it starts to become quite literally incomprehensible. You may think that’s progress. I don’t.
Bullshit again. It’s all about clarity of communication. This is not a hard concept to grasp. That simple principle explains, for example, why we have apostrophes in our repertoire of punctuation: it’s to avoid ambiguities and improve readability, making explicit for example the distinction between plurals and possessives. Which also explains why advocating for the abolition of apostrophes is manifestly stupid, and why removing them creates ambiguity and/or changes meaning.
I have no issue with the continued evolution of the English language, though you’ve somehow convinced yourself that I do. I endorse and admire those with a mastery of the language who creatively advance its frontiers. I’ll even acknowledge that ignorant mistakes often get adopted into the language over time, though often to its detriment. But whether originating out of inspired genius or ignorance or some other historical accident, the real advances in the language have been those changes that were adopted because they actually serve a purpose toward that all-important goal of clarity. Most of the others have just messed it up with strangely inconsistent spelling and bizarre grammar rules that are the bane of those learning English for the first time. About as much real progress in language arises from ignorance as in any other field like science and engineering – which is to say, not zero, but very little. QED indeed.
Since nothing I can possibly say will break through your wall of self-satisfied insularity, let me suggest a way that you can do it yourself and yet think it’s your own idea.
Study the actual history of the actual English language as it is actually written and spoken for several years. You will come out the other side with a greater admiration for the actual language, not the one with the “all-important goal of clarity” (something impossible to write out without several breaks for uncontrollable laughter), and you will be happily denouncing pompous prescriptivists alongside me in future threads.
Signed,
A former prescriptivist until I learned some actual facts
Thanks for the advice. I guess you missed this post of mine from back in January, an observation that I owe to Bill Bryson’s wonderful book The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way which I read long ago and thoroughly enjoyed. What you also notably miss is the all-important distinction I continue to make between changes in the language that actually serve a purpose, and changes due to ignorance or random historical accident that just mess it up. I don’t deny that both occur. I prefer to encourage the former, and discourage the latter.
Yes, I had. But that led me to this post, also in that thread.
So. You’re 16 and you just discovered Bill Bryson, of all people, and now are very full of yourself. (Bryson, you’ll find out if you hang around here longer, is roundly denouncedfor Mother Tongue and every single book he’s ever written as being full of mistakes, idiocies, and general flatulence.)
Read Guy Deutscher. Or David Crystal. Go and dig up an old copy of Jim Quinn’s American Tongue and Cheek. Then go on to more technical works. Your blood pressure will go down and people will stop sidling away from you at parties.
But whatever you do, please, and I mean this sincerely, do not post on the subject of English again while you still believe that the difference in usage between hung and hanged is a matter of grammar.
Except when food stores advertise Mother’s Day and Father’s Day Special’s.
This discussion is turning distinctly amusing, but hey, I’m willing to go anywhere!
Let me be clear, since you have a way of deflecting the discussion into the far outfields of irrelevancy whenever it’s not going your way. I am a scientist by profession (retired) and much more than casually aware of the difference between an academic and a popular writer. Bryson is a popular writer, but my point was that your argument that I don’t know nuthin’ about the history of English is rather misplaced, as the book I referenced covers a lot of territory and overall does it well.
So Bryson has been roundly denounced “around here”, whatever that means? The same guy who was awarded an honorary OBE for his contribution to literature, an honorary doctorate from King’s College London for his acclaim as “as a science communicator, historian and man of letters”, and the first Briton to be elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society? Seems like a difference of opinion from your “around here” alleged consensus, yes? One Summer America, 1927 was another enjoyable Bryson work, telling with commendable skill an extraordinary story of one extraordinary year. If you look hard enough you’ll probably find that he got something wrong there, too. So what?
As an academic who’s been writing for most of my life I think I have a pretty good understanding of the English language. So if you want to continue to believe that there is no difference whatsoever between “Father’s Day”, “Fathers’ Day”, and “Fathers Day”, then please yourself, perhaps along with your language-butchering journalist friends. I’ve already told you why there is a difference, and why it matters to us how our language evolves. And if you want to quibble about “hanged” vs. “hung” – and I mean this sincerely – take it up in the other thread. It’s not a pivotal issue of language misuse, as I already said there, but nitpick to your heart’s content. (Which, you might note, is not the same as nitpicking to your hearts’ content, nor the same as nitpicking to your hearts content.)
GQ, you might note, is full of actual scientists, working or retired, and provides excellent commentary on an astounding range of scientific, technical, and engineering issues. There are no shortage of those threads, so whenever you see one related to your expertise dive right in. You will be welcomed.
I’m a fairly decent professional explainer so I sometimes post in those science threads, trying to help posters get over their initial misunderstandings. I’m not a scientist, and the real scientists don’t hesitate to set me straight if my simplified versions mangle the more complicated facts. That’s the way it works here.
What I am is a professional wordsmith - writer, editor, one foot in every aspect of the field - and unlike many other professionals, I happen to be interested in how the language works from the bottom up. You don’t need to know much of any of that to do your work, but I hate being wrong and I learned that being a prescriptivist was wrong and the so-called “language mavens” had their heads up their collective asses so I set out to thoroughly correct my knowledge of the real working language.
Whether you want to consider me an expert is your prerogative. What you should hear nevertheless is that from my perspective, your technical comments here about language are as lacking as my technical comments about your field of science would be. Whatever your opinions are about particular words, you’ve managed to show an inability to distinguish between grammar, style, and usage, and you also stated that that English - English! - has “rules of spelling.” Rules of thumb, maybe, but rules? That adds up to a comprehensive misunderstanding of how English works. If you pontificate off of that misunderstanding, you will be called on it. Pompousness is deadly. As an expert in that field, too, I long ago learned to tone it down.
These battles are part of the fun, and I don’t take them all that seriously. My seriously friendly advice is not to build up a reputation as a know-it-all in fields outside your true expertise. Experts lurk everywhere. You cannot keep them quiet and you cannot win.
I appreciate the personal backgrounder (sincerely), though not so much the supercilious advice. I respect your background, but I do find it humorously ironic that someone can deem themselves an “expert” in a field that they have just finished declaring to be one that by its very nature eludes expertise, an apparent ad hoc mess that cannot be governed by prescription and in which (to quote your own words), “people can, deliberately or accidentally, flout your prescriptive notions and change the language to suit themselves”.
You write well, so I’m not surprised to learn that you’re connected with the literary arts. In my opinion, I write well too, because I care about the language and care about expressing myself clearly and well. And that, in my view, does give me some right to opine on what constitutes good English and what does not. Most of what I’ve said in this discussion should be self-evident and none of it should be controversial. The basis of spelling “Father’s Day” is a matter of record, as already pointed out. It’s self-evident that a plural possessive has a different meaning (and in this case, a subtly different connotation) than the singular possessive, and that dispensing with the apostrophe altogether loses both distinctions.
It is surely not contentious that poor writers who butcher the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation are also poor communicators, their missives sometimes being virtually incomprehensible – we’ve all seen such writing. Bad writing is writing that you have to struggle to understand, that assaults the sensibilities of the reader with the writer’s carelessness and ignorance. Good writing is not just comprehensible but sometimes stunning in its clarity or imagery, and in the best writing the words practically rise off the page and sing to you. But to achieve the best writing, understanding the basic rules of English is the first and most elementary prerequisite. This doesn’t mean you must always blindly obey them, but you do have to know the rules really well before you start bending them. The best writing comes from the soul, from an intangible feel for language, but before you can soar to those heights there’s a great deal of work to do on the ground. Most of us never do it. I believe those things, and I’m sorry that you regard it as “pontificating”.
And incidentally, as for my saying that spelling has “rules”, your disdain for my comment is noted, but I was simply describing the fact that words do indeed have correct spellings, not that there’s a reliable principle for inferring what that spelling might be (and duly acknowledging things like instances of multiple acceptable spellings and the great American-British divide). I’ve already said that English has evolved some crazily inconsistent spellings. But if I write that I have a kat and two dogges I think that can be fairly judged to be incorrect.
Well, I didn’t really expect to convert you with a single post. I’m good, but not that good.
We’re actually arguing past one another, emphasizing different aspects of a huge subject. The world as it is vs. the world as it should be. Be my guest on “should” as long as you’re resigned that nobody in the world will pay an ounce of attention to you.
Make one mistake, though, and I’ll be at your throat.
You’re mistaken if you believe that nobody will pay an ounce of attention to any good prescriptivist.
Just read that this morning in the NYTimes. 'Twas ever thus. Who said those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it? Santa Claus, I think. I can’t be bothered to look up facts.
I’m one of the few people here who defend Strunk & White. People who realize their English needs improvement are best served with good Basic advice instead of a course in Advanced Nuance. Prescriptivism isn’t helpful, and it seldom even rises to the category of “correct.” You can’t name a good prescriptivist but I did at least do a Google search for “famous prescriptivist.” I found Lynne Truss. Lynne Truss! Strunk & White redefined for the British audience is a prescriptivist! Is that what John Simon sneered his way into the grave for?
That link goes to the Arrant Pedantry blog. I suggest with the force of a bulldozer on the back of a bumblebee that your read his 12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes. It practically defines wolfpup. And I’ll superciliously say it defines you.
Don’t know why you think it “defines me” when in fact I agree with some of it, though definitely not all of it. For instance you’ll notice in all of my posts here I’ve disregarded the “correct” placement of commas and periods inside quotation marks (though I’ve sometimes deviated from that practice) because I regard it as a typographical affectation that just doesn’t seem right in the context, or “register”, of an Internet post. Hey, I can bend the rules with the best of 'em!
But some things in that list are demonstrably wrong, and even his own fawning admirers have pointed them out. It’s amusing right from the start that he begins (in point #1) with a severely rigorous definition of exactly what “grammar” is and chastises his enemies for not even understanding what the word properly means, before going on just a little later (in point #8) to basically say that words mean whatever the hell you want them to mean. An example of Muphry’s Law if ever there was one!
Among the excellent comments posted by readers:
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the observation that “there has be be a limit to how much language can flex. If you are no longer making yourself understood it seems to me you’ve crossed that line” – a point that I’ve also made here.
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his attempt to decouple good grammar from good communication in point #10 is misguided and, let’s face it, just flat-out wrong. As one reader said, “… while good grammar doesn’t necessarily lead to good communication, I do think that poor grammar can lead to poor communication. The example you gave, granted, would not impede communication. However, when people have unclear pronouns/referents in their papers, I find it very difficult to read and understand the content (I’m constantly trying to figure out the antecedents). The same is true for dangling modifiers and many other grammatical issues.” Lord knows, I’ve struggled enough myself with poorly written material to know how true this is. Moreover, as another reader points out, his counter-example is a very poor one, since “ain’t no one got time for that” is actually a quotation of Sweet Brown and this sentence is well-formed in AAVE (African American Vernacular English), a dialect in its own right.
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his point about the Oxford comma being a mere matter of style is not always true and sometimes glaringly false. As one astute reader points out, “I hosted a party to which I invited two idiots, Bethany and Irene” is not at all the same as “I hosted a party to which I invited two idiots, Bethany, and Irene”.
And I have a few comments of my own, such as his point #4 where apparently a word is whatever anyone feels like making up. He cites as evidence a blog much like his own that purports to show that “irregardless” is really a word. This particular blog manages to work into its own argument the non-word “superhyperbolic” and then tries to make the case that its non-wordness is equivalent to that of “irregardless”. No, it isn’t. Like the one I just made up, it’s an artificial word crafted for a purpose, often a whimsical one, constructed according to logical rules of compounding with a clear and unambiguous intended meaning. But what exactly is the meaning of “irregardless” and how does it differ from “regardless”? It surely must mean the opposite. Or is it a paradoxical form of emphasis, meaning “very much regardless”? No, what it actually means is that the speaker or writer has confused “regardless” with “irrespective”. He has made a mistake. Now it’s certainly true that if a sufficiently large number of people make the same mistake for a long enough period of time, dictionaries will have to accommodate them. But it would be wrong to consider this sort of thing to be an evolution of the language that contributes anything to its powers of expression – it’s more of a counterproductive mutation, throwing one more irrational monkey wrench into the works to bewilder future students of English. Ignorance is not creativity, and let’s not confuse the two.
My favorite reader comment is this one:
“I had a fantastic English teacher who explained when asked about dialect (central Scotland secondary comp) that dialect was fine but slovenly incomprehensible speech wasn’t, that the use of language is to communicate, if the intended audience comprehends the message then the author has succeeded, regardless of how many rules are broken.”
I wholeheartedly agree with that. The only caveat I would add – and the belief that has caused me to be labelled a prescriptivist and other nasty things – is that the overwhelming majority of the time, one finds that language that succeeds in communicating well is language that follows the rules. Only rarely, and usually only in the hands of the exceptionally competent, does breaking the rules create something new that actually enhances this one sole purpose of language. In all other cases, it leads to the aforementioned slovenly incomprehensible speech or writing.