[JadeNB]

> As such it cannot be broken down into its constituent parts and analyzed for meaning, it has to be understood as an atomic utterance.

I understand the implicit preface that is something like "If you want to communicate frictionlessly …", but I think that one actually doesn't have to do this. The arguments for accepting variants of spelling do not, I think, automatically apply to accepting (illogical) variants of phrases; while there is no intrinsically 'right' spelling of a word, there is a sense (given what the constituent words mean) in which "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" are objectively different, and the latter captures what is probably meant.

I mean to say that it is perfectly possible to insist on, and to try to enforce, a logical approach to the use of language. (Without this impulse, for example, we wouldn't have Lojban (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)—which, OK, may not be a very practical loss, but I think we can agree would be an intellectual loss.) Granted this will not optimise for communication, or pleasant social interaction, but we all have the right to choose the fitness metric that we want to use!