"That which is"
I'd enjoyed reading a particular columnist for
a few years. His work was witty, informative, and entertaining. Until
one week when he published a screed on improper grammar and vocabulary.
He had been set off, he said, by a librarian describing one building as
being kitty-corner from another. "That's not a real word!" he insisted.
"It's a shame that a librarian, of all people, has obviously never
opened a dictionary."
If the columnist had bothered to consult a
dictionary himself, he would have doubtless been surprised to find
kitty-corner, along with its variants kitty-cornered, cater-corner,
cata-croner, and catty-corner. Not only is it a real word, but it has
been around (at least its cater-corner form) since at least the
eleventh century.
That concept, "real word," is layered with
contradiction. In one sense, no words are "real." They are verbal
symbols---artificial representations---for ideas and objects. They
represent real things, but can't be said to have a literal reality in
and of themselves. In another sense, if a combination of sounds
succeeds in communicating an idea to at least some listeners, it is
doing the work of a word, so it must be as real as any "legitimate"
word.
Another time an editor told me that she
positively could not tolerate writers who confused "that" with "which."
She insisted that all one had to do was read the explanation about "the
correct way" to use each of the two words in a particular reference
work. I didn't exactly endear myself when I pointed out that there was
more than one correct way to use each word, so perhaps she should
rephrase the statement in the future.
While it is true that some uses of "which"
instead of "that" result in sentences which could be interpretted in
more than one way, 99% of the time the context makes the meaning
perfectly clear to the reader. Which, ironically, is what the reference
book she had mentioned concluded. Even more amusing, some sources argue
that the confusion isn't so much caused by the dichotomy between "this"
and "which," but rather the misuse of commas.
One of the reasons that most readers or
listeners don't get confused by the that/which situation is because
most readers don't understand there is a subtle difference in the
meanings of the two words. The people least likely to be confused are
those less well-informed. Which seems to imply that the more
well-informed one is on the topic of proper English usage, the more
likely one is to misunderstand most people's use of English.
I'm not sure whether we should laugh or cry at
that thought, but I am certain that no one should take the rules of
grammar as seriously as the columnist and editor mentioned above.
Which isn't to say that I don't have my own
pet peeves about writing, word usage, punctuation, and so forth. I just
try not to rant about them too often. I've broken more than a few of
the rules myself. I know that some figures of speech I grew up with are
considered improper, colloquial, or undesirable. So I try to cut other
people at least as much slack as I hope they give me.
If that which doesn't kill us makes us
stronger, there's always hope that mistakes will lead to learning. Or
at least a good laugh.
--Roy Blount, Jr.
.