The Art and Infamy of Missing the Point
by Jason Edwards
I’m sick of word Nazis. I just finished reading an article in my local paper, a letter to the editor, in which the writer complains about the use of the word “infatuated.” In a previous article, the paper called the murderer of a local teacher “infatuated.” The reader who wrote the letter provided a dictionary definition of the word, and called the paper to task, saying it should choose its words more carefully, lest it diminish the repercussion of the killer’s actions.
Bullshit. There’s a word for you.
No matter what reason a person has for killing someone, unless it’s war or self defense, we the people are going to be appalled. We may be jaded, inured by constant reports of violence, but we do not dismiss someone’s murder just because someone claims the killer was merely “infatuated.” I’ll go you one better. The poor “sap” had a “crush” on the teacher and simply found it “difficult to deal with rejection.” There you go. Then he gunned her down in cold blood.
Words are powerful, sure, when they’re used well to describe emotion or opinion in a poetic manner that evokes a response in the reader he might not otherwise realized he was capable of feeling. But facts are powerful too. A man shot a defenseless woman. I don’t care what words gets used to describe him, or her. It’s awful what happened- and if anything diminishes what happened, it’s harping on a perceived misuse of a word, backed up by a dictionary reference.
Newsflash: dictionaries are not authoritative. They’re records of use, not lawbooks dictating right and wrong. Same with books on grammar, while we’re on the subject, and those hoary little so-called “style guides.”
On the other hand, maybe I’m focusing this ire at the wrong parties. I should put Grammar Nazis in the same boat as psychopaths and tornadoes: forces of nature that can’t be reasoned with, merely survived. I imagine the newspaper gets letters from folks all the time saying “you used that word wrong” (or even worse: “that’s not a word!” Oh don’t get me started). Indeed, the idiot who wrote to the editor to complain about “infatuated” has probably written in before. Why give them a voice? Why take up inches when you could be writing about, I don’t know, loganberries or something. I have no idea what loganberries are.
Please stop wasting my time with fools who want to foist their fractures sense of world order on me. Please give me facts. Start with loganberries. Do they make a good jam?