archaisms of the illiterate; the historian’s ‘it should seem,’ even the essayist’s ‘You shall find,’ is less odious though not less deliberate than the ere, oft, aught, thereanent, I wot, I trow, and similar ornaments, with which amateurs are found of tricking out their sentences. That is only natural. An educated writer’s choice falls upon archaisms less hackneyed than the amateur’s; he uses them, too, with more discretion, say, of once in three essays. The amateur indulges us with his whole repertoire in a single newspaper letter of twenty or thirty lines and - what is worse-cannot live up to the splendours of which he is so lavish; charmed with the discovery of some antique order of words, he selects a modern slang phrase to operate upon; he begins a sentence with ‘oft times,’ and ends it with a grammatical blunder; aspires to ‘albeit,’ and achieves ‘howbeit.’ Our list begins with the educated specimens, but lower down the reader will find several instances of this fatal irregularity of style, fatal because the culprit proves himself unworthy of what is worthless to use and by using it to make it worse is to court derision.” (Vide King’s English by H.W. Fowler & F.C. Fowler, pp. 193 - 194).
“The only standard by which the conformity implied in grammatical truth must be ascertained in every language, is the authorized, national, and present use of that language...” (Vide Literary Hand Book of Composition and Style By Blackman, pp. 28 - 29).
“Knowledge of good usage can be acquired only by associating in life with the best speakers or in literature with the best writers .... Neither the grammar nor the vocabulary of one age is precisely the grammar or vocabulary of another. The language of a later period may not vary much from the language of an earlier one, but will vary somewhat. It is not necessarily better or worse; it is simply different.” (Vide The Standard of Usage in English by Thomas R. Lounsbury, pp. 98 - 99.)
1367 Minute of Dissent
