Cleansing the stables of language

During the mid-17th century the idea gained ground in various parts of Europe that the world was about to come to an end. Bewildered by the effects of widespread war and revolution, bad harvests and a miniature Ice Age taking the form of savage winters, people made ready for the sounding of the Last Trumpet, the arrival of the Four Horsemen and the whole apocalyptic shebang. Mad prophets, false messiahs and a host of other doomsters had a perfect field day proclaiming sinful mankind’s imminent annihilation.

Something not altogether dissimilar is now happening in the case of the English language. Following Lynne Truss’s awful warnings (I’m careful to use the word ‘awful’ in its original sense of ‘inspiring reverence’) a score of voices now urges us to repent before our split infinitives, greengrocers’ apostrophes and misrelated participial phrases send vernacular purity to somewhere well beyond kingdom come (and please observe that ‘well’ here is strictly adverbial, not a modish reinforcer as in ‘well random’ or ‘well buff’).