[readthenotes1]

"Lots of English writing has got simpler through use of the plain style, sticking to a logical shared syntax, especially the syntax of speech. But all the other ways of writing are still there, often showing up when we don’t expect them."

My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and.

In this case, the second sentence could equally have been written as just another clause

[renewiltord]

Yea but your early grade teachers also teach you that you can’t take the square root of a negative number. That’s how good education is done. First you are taught the rules, then you are taught the few times when to break them, and then as a master hopefully you flow between the states. Forever being in the first state is just stunting your own education.

[AdieuToLogic]

>> "Lots of English writing has got simpler through ..."

> My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and.

One of my elementary school teachers also taught me to use past participles, which means the quote from the article should have been written thusly:

  Lots of English writing has gotten simpler through ...

It is amusing that an article dedicated to enumerating the degeneration of English prose uses simplistic sentence structure as well as malformed sentences, such as the above.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Did your elementary school teacher make it clear whether you should pronounce the middle two t's in gotten as a glottal or a held stop? What do you think of that advice today? How might it vary depending on where in the anglophone world you live, and your age?

[AdieuToLogic]

> Did your elementary school teacher make it clear whether you should pronounce the middle two t's in gotten as a glottal or a held stop?

Yes

> What do you think of that advice today?

It is a small part of my English enunciation.

> How might it vary depending on where in the anglophone world you live, and your age?

Significantly.

But I did not author a critique regarding English prose and the nature of prevalent sentence structures therein.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The point is that language, both written and spoken, changes through time and space.

[tom_]

"Got" is the usual past participle in British English. Even if you don't speak British English yourself, it does count as a valid form of the language - even if of course a barbaric, corrupted one, degenerate, practically a pidgin.

[AdieuToLogic]

> "Got" is the usual past participle in British English.

Had the author declared what English dialect they were using and/or critiquing, and were it British English as well, then this is a salient point indeed.