Unprofessional advice on professional editing

A practising professional editor just wrote a terrible blog post on common "grammatical errors":
http://litreactor.com/columns/20-common-grammar-mistakes-that-almost-everyone-gets-wrong


I commented as follows:

I agree with jcasey and the others who think this is a bad article. It's also dangerous and destructive.

Dangerous, because it misrepresents so many aspects of language use, even written fairly formal usage, ie it's misleading. And it's misleading to a high degree and so much the worse because it's written by a practising editor, ie someone sitting in judgment.

Which is why it's destructive - it puts all the focus of writing on the wrong things. A lot of commentators have pointed out that most of the quibbles are about word use, not grammatical structures. Since a lot of the points are (to say the least) "moot", a lot of inexperienced or unsure reader/writers will become even more anxious about their use of language and dry up rather than state their views.

Mark makes a lot of useful distinctions, including prescriptive and descriptive. But prescription, ie language dictatorship, is rooted in description regardless. The distinction of "educated" is more useful, but then the question is educated to what degree? And with what result?

A real education won't lead to mechanical pedantry, and mechanical pedantry is exactly what this article gives us. It's education to the level of Word's grammar and usage check. God help us all. Semi-educated, half-baked. A mid-level language bureaucrat's plateau. Style and usage by decree.

This worked partially and for a time in the heyday of Classical French, but it's never ever worked in English, and in fact it has only served to provoke the scorn and amusement of good English writers. Mocking linguistic hyper-correctness and up-tight (f)rigidity is a red-blooded tradition in our language, as is its whoring around with its own dialects and each and every other language it comes into contact with.

Educated users of language who wants to get their ideas across with vigour (yes I'm British) and grace will follow the adage: "Laws are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools". There are NO FORMAL RULES in English. There are deep-seated grammatical (syntactical, lexical and phonological rules), and breaking these will break communication to a greater or lesser extent, but ain't no way nohow breaking formal rules will blunt an argument or detract from its power. (Check out Labov's 1972 article "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence" for an incontrovertible demonstration of this.)

Or, as the King of Hearts said to Alice:

"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."