October 18, 2005
Decrees
“Life commandments” are what some call those subtle little decrees ingested from the ambiance of the times that one never forgets and that create a deja vu almost every time one is mentioned. Among them for me is the wretched memory of my Depression-Era family when we had to make sure the cap was always back on the toothpaste before we brushed for fear of wasting any. Wretched, because it simply has never gone away.
I studied architectural drawing in high school and learned that writing in block letters instead of script is lettering, that print and printing are words to be reserved for Johann Gutenberg and linotypes or whatever. A scale should never be called a ruler. Straightedges and triangles are precisely and only that, expressly for drawing straight lines. The course was also my introduction to the French curve, a flat drafting instrument with curved edges and several scroll-shaped cutouts, used as a guide when constructing graphs or making engineering drawings and not what its name might have suggested to high school boys.
Rules of grammar sort of fall into a similar grouping like discerning when to use “few” or “less,” or when to hyphenate. People in general seem less and less to pay any attention, and fewer and fewer seem to at all nowadays. Furthermore, ending a sentence with a preposition is something even the style books seem to have given up fretting about (sic).
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to Katrina or Rita Relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]