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by MindBeams 446 days ago
This sort of anti-intellectualism is the perfect antidote for those who claim that improper grammar is nothing more than evidence of language "evolving."
2 comments

I think many grammar rules are not intellectual but just randomly evolved conventions.

E.g. some English language rule says that a comma or ending period of a non-quoted sentence goes inside the quotes if there's something quoted at the end of that sentence. That rule feels anti-intellectual to me, as if there's some misunderstanding of how hierarchical placement in one-dimensional space works (since something that's not being quoted is being put inside quotes)

Spelling used to be more fluid and up to the writer/printer. Printers would also use different spellings as a mechanism to change the line width and otherwise format text to their liking.

https://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Histengl/spelling.html

That "rule" is the rule in America but not elsewhere. Please break it. It is stupid.
What is more intellectual about wanting to complicate the language for one reason, versus wanting to simplify it for another?