Good Use - How to Use the Language Properly

Good Use - How to Use the Language Properly

What is good use? It can be a number of things for different people. The English professor has a entirely different definition of good use than the mathematician or the businessman. The problem arises how does the ordinary person know what is good use and what is not. What is the meaning of good use, the noun and verb agreeing or is it something more than that? One can read excerpts from old authors on their thoughts and beliefs, but do these thoughts and beliefs withstand the test of time. I would like to touch on a few of these authors and reflect my own thoughts.

I would like to start the trek through history with John F. Genung. Genung thought that good use had a standard which every writer should follow. The standard is only one word. The word is "PURITY." As Genung states "the writer must see to it he keeps the mother tongue unsullied." The use of one word to describe "good writing" is crazy. It takes more than just 'PURITY' to have good writing, sure it may help, but there has to be more to it than just that one thing. My reasoning for this is there would not be tons of textbooks if "good use" were that simple. I know in grade school or even high school, students are taught how to use the language correctly. If all it took to have "good writing" was purity in our writing, then how would we know if it was good usage or not. Genung expressed that the mother tongue must be kept unsullied, that can not happen with new words being added to the language. New word of thought of and used in our language all the time, and they are used in good writing. This is the point that I disagree with Genung. The word "unsullied" in his article is rarely used in society today, does he have bad usage because it is no longer pure to the mother tongue? I don't think so.

I read the article "Justin's links to the underground" it was written by a man who works at MIT. To be honest, I really don't recall what the article was about. This is for good reason, the article was cleverly crafted. There was no capitalization in the article, the lower case "i" had me, all I wanted to do is go and correct his paper because it was very irritating to me.