Language-Change Index.
The third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage reflects several new practices. Invariably inferior forms, for example, are now marked with asterisks preceding the term or phrase, a marking common in linguistics.
The most interesting new feature is the Language-Change Index. Its purpose is to measure how widely accepted various linguistic innovations have become. Such a measuring system for usage guides was first proposed by Louis G. Heller and James Macris in 1967. They noted that “usage specialists can make a clear-cut demarcation of phases in the evolutionary process relevant to the inception and development of alternative terms.”
In these tips, the five stages are tagged as:
Stage 1 (“rejected”): A new form emerges as an innovation (or a dialectal form persists) among a small minority of the language community, perhaps displacing a traditional usage (e.g.: *”bedroom suit” for “bedroom suite”).
Stage 2 (“widely shunned”): The form spreads to a significant fraction of the language community but remains unacceptable in standard usage (e.g.: “swam” for past-participial “swum”).
Stage 3 (“widespread but . . .”): The form becomes commonplace even among many well-educated people but is still avoided in careful usage (e.g.: “unique” as a word of degree, as in “very unique”).
Stage 4 (“ubiquitous but . . .”): The form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts (die-hard snoots) (e.g.: “resumé” for “résumé”).
Stage 5 (“fully accepted”): The form is universally accepted (not counting pseudo-snoot eccentrics) (e.g.: “sculpt” as a verb).
*Invariably inferior form.
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Quotation of the Day: “The English language has been quite needlessly and foolishly complicated by lawyers, politicians, tradesmen, bad poets, and a whole host of woolly-minded people.” S.P.B. Mais, The Writing of English 235 (1935).
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