Unfashionable writing

Just amused by the state of the world today, as you'll soon see...

What set me off?

A comment on a list that stated editors and agents expect you to have a complete and working knowledge of grammar before you submit to them.

Why is that amusing to me?

Grammar is changeable. I mean...some things are pretty much wrong...dead wrong...always. But I find it somewhere between amusing and annoying that you learn the "rules" of grammar, and every time the powers that be that write the Chicago Manual of Style make a new edition, they change it, just to change it, seemingly.

As if that's not bad enough, then they make things optional, so the individual house styles can choose one or the other. For instance, the use of commas, in certain situations, is completely optional, depending on whether not using them would cause confusion for the reader. It's no wonder some people find grammar daunting.

Same thing with spelling. I'm sorry. I learned to spell with traditional spellings, so when the new M-W comes out and says that the "new way" to spell a word (dumbed down for the idiots who don't want to pick up a dictionary and spell things correctly) is now the preferred way to spell it, I find it galling that some publishers will choose to make the preferred spelling the default for their house, across the board, which dumbs down my books, IMO.

I make a habit of telling the middle and high school kids I teach about writing that you should absolutely learn grammar, punctuation, and spelling...but don't expect them to be stagnant. Don't expect them to be "correct," when submitting to a publisher who has gone through three versions of the CMS and M-W since their textbooks and teachers have been updated. I have nothing against a living, breathing language. I do have something against being told that the old ways are wrong, just because someone wants to sell a new edition of a book. They aren't wrong. They are just being made unfashionable, thanks to CMS and M-W.

Just remember the old saying.

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." Oscar Wilde

or

"The fashion wears out more clothing than the man." Shakespeare