Our Collective Grammar, It Sucketh
Sep. 20th, 2011 09:47 amYesterday, while praising Storm for her excellent dinner-making, I used the phrase "way better," rather than "far better," to describe the distinction between home-cooked seasoned beef and something out of a can.
In the context of a blog post, I suppose the colloquial "way better" is marginally acceptable. What I don't find acceptable is finding the word "way" used as a adverbial superlative in professional writing. Take Lawrence Cunningham's How To Think Like Benjamin Graham, a rather popular book about old-school style values investing. It's a well-praised book with (so far) a fairly standard approach to investing, although you'd be better served actually, you know, reading Benjamin Graham.
On page 8, Cunningham writes: "Market frenzies like these are not isolated and certainly not unique episodes in financial history. On the contrary, market bubbles—situations in which prices are way higher than values—happen all too often." This is not the first time Cunningham uses 'way' as an adverbial superlative; there's one in the Introduction as well.
We all have our grammar peeves, this is one of mine. I think 'way' is a weak adverbial superlative, seeing as it finds its origins in the Bill & Ted pool of dialect. I use it when I'm lazy, and regret it later. To see it in a book praised by Forbes and Money magazines disappointed me.
In the context of a blog post, I suppose the colloquial "way better" is marginally acceptable. What I don't find acceptable is finding the word "way" used as a adverbial superlative in professional writing. Take Lawrence Cunningham's How To Think Like Benjamin Graham, a rather popular book about old-school style values investing. It's a well-praised book with (so far) a fairly standard approach to investing, although you'd be better served actually, you know, reading Benjamin Graham.
On page 8, Cunningham writes: "Market frenzies like these are not isolated and certainly not unique episodes in financial history. On the contrary, market bubbles—situations in which prices are way higher than values—happen all too often." This is not the first time Cunningham uses 'way' as an adverbial superlative; there's one in the Introduction as well.
We all have our grammar peeves, this is one of mine. I think 'way' is a weak adverbial superlative, seeing as it finds its origins in the Bill & Ted pool of dialect. I use it when I'm lazy, and regret it later. To see it in a book praised by Forbes and Money magazines disappointed me.
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