Speculation, Fact and Fiction

Listening to the radio this morning, I recalled a journo pal telling me how a very earnest American would-be novelist had told him this, in those very words. They had been arguing over his use of 'to impact' as a transitive verb. English journo (ex national mid-market tabloid and BBC) was arguing for 'make an impact upon' - after, naturally, explaining what a transitive verb was.

This morning, the Today Programme's Thought for the Day had a female cleric of some sort talking about dealing with buried feelings. She said how hard it can be 'to surface such emotions'.

Say what??? The merits of what she was saying were lost as my toes curled and my blood boiled.

And don't get me started on people using 'enormity' when they actually mean 'magnitude'.

But I recall reading letters between Cicero and Julius Caesar when I was a student, where Cicero was arguing for the classical forms of Latin while Caesar insisted the written language was a living thing and must change as the spoken word did.

Is protesting about such things an exercise in futility?