My Personal Battle With Language

The funny thing about being an editor is that it enables an unnecessary sense of power. Whether you're using AP, APA, or Chicago Manual of Style, you get so used to correcting a particular wording or phrase that it starts to bother you when you see it used incorrectly. Especially if you're not in a position to edit it.

We become so used to adhering to this guide that we start to believe that it was carved into a tablet centuries ago, transcribed from the direct words of God.

I use Chicago Manual of Style at work but am familiar with AP. I belong to a LinkedIn group at my alma mater that features mostly journalists and PR professionals who use AP. One of them started a discussion about AP's recent change to accept "over" as interchangeable with "more than" when referencing quantity. Panic ensued.

I've been trying to wrap my mind around why this irritates people. I think that whatever you were taught as the "right" way to do something as a youth, you imagine was always that way. "Over" was never used for quantity, how can we change it now?

I think the other reason is power. AP editors have continuously corrected persons using "over" instead of "more than." Now they have to let it go, which means they lose a little bit of that power.

My English professor used to say that the word sycophant used to mean "one who smuggles figs." It disappeared for centuries and only reappeared recently with the meaning "a person who praises powerful people in order to get their approval." Language is a synthetic, human invention. We give meaning to words. Not lexicographers or editors, we as a whole. It's a democratic process.

Now that I've gone all high and mighty, I'm still mad about the acceptance of "literally" and it's new, not-so-literal definition. People say "literally" when they mean "figuratively." I'm fine with adding new meanings, except that "literally" and "figuratively" mean the exact opposite. So now, "literally" means "literally" and "the exact opposite of literally."

Thanks to everyone for screwing this up. You couldn't have just said "My head exploded"? You had to say "My head literally exploded" and add extra confusing language that your directionless friends assumed was the right way to use? Your poor grammar spread like a meme and now we have to accept it in our dictionaries.

Thanks, this is literally the worst thing to happen to language.