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Usage: Some Examples of Right & Wrong versus Etiquette

Here is a set of examples, organized on a sliding scale, from clearly distinguished right and wrong to less defensible distinctions.

fewer vs. less: Countable things are fewer: fewer pencils; amounts that can’t be counted are less: less support. This is a helpful distinction, one the language needs.

good vs. well: Good is an adjective, a part of speech that modifies (describes) nouns and other adjectives. It was a good movie. Well is an adverb, a part of speech that modifies a verb or another adverb. She does not feel well. Good modifies movie; well modifies feel. This is another helpful distinction; therefore, most people consider this word choice a matter of right and wrong.

can vs. may: Can refers to what one is able to do; may refers to what one is permitted to do. He can spit across the classroom, but according to the teacher, he may not. Again, this distinction conveys a meaningful difference, although in actual practice, the word may is starting to lose its clout—it sounds fussy to many contemporary ears.

between vs. among: Between refers to two items, among to more than two. The difference between sushi and sashimi is more easily understood than the differences among sushi, sashimi and maki. In this case, we can clearly see that if you used between in both cases, a reader would still be able to make sense of the sentence, but the use of among is helpful—it lets us know that more than two items are coming. Still, as you can see, this example of usage is less significant, more a matter of good manners, than can vs. may. Nonetheless, it is arguably a useful distinction.

different from vs. different than: Some say a writer should not use different than, because than is comparative, but different already signifies that a comparison is coming, so you should always says different from. Let’s use this example—and there are others like it—as an emblem of a preference for which there is not really much of a reason.

ending a sentence with a preposition: the prescription that one should not end a sentence with a preposition, or if you will, that a preposition is a part of speech you should not end a sentence with, is a case of rather arbitrary usage. In this same category goes the split infinitive—the practice of locating a word inside a to + verb construction, such as to boldly go where no one has gone before. In a formal setting—an application to law school, say—you would want to be careful to avoid these usages, even though they are not actually wrong.

Why then do some guardians of the language insist that we not end sentences with prepositions? Is it snobbery? Etiquette? First of all, let’s admit that etiquette serves a definite purpose, as anyone who has gone out to dinner and had the misfortune to sit next to a food fight will attest. To be understanding, let’s assume that the person who enforces usage distinctions as hard-and-fast rules, even when they are not, is a person who wishes to maintain standards in the face of change. And that too is a position one may (and can!) respect.

But the fact is that the language is always changing, not just with the addition of new words to the standard dictionaries, but also with the circumstances of usage— “the established or customary use or employment of language, words, expressions, etc.” Ultimately, a panel of experts cannot control usage, and that is a healthy thing, allowing a language to evolve over time.

When Usage Begins to Change Grammar

Which brings us back to the issue of grammatical correctness, a subject that impelled this digression into usage in the first place (yes, we know it’s a fragment). Usage, and more particularly changes in usage, bear on grammar because grammar, although relatively fixed, does not stand still, and the doorway through which grammar changes is the same one through which usage walks.

Here are three common examples of how changing usage appears to be inspiring a change in the grammatical conventions of right and wrong. These changes have not yet occurred, but arguably,