>"Carter Jefferson" <carter...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:49lcuv8u8eef5efqt1dthe6in4am2delc4@4ax.com...
>[...]
>> I can know perfectly well that an author is using a fairly
>> popular, but ungrammatical or non-standard, usage, but
>> I have to call the author on it and change it to the
>> standard way. You're willing to accept something 44
>> percent of the usage panel usage says is okay, but I feel
>> obligated to adhere pretty closely to the majority opinion
>> in AHD4. I have to draw the line somewhere; the purely
>> descriptivist position just won't work. Sometimes, as in
>> the case of "persuade" and "convince," I'm more strict
>> than the panel, on the ground that there's no point in
>> offending the purists, when the non-purists won't care
>> either way, though I don't meet the Walker standard.

>> For example, I find a good many, maybe most, of the
>> writers I edit using "like" as a conjunction. I use it that
>> way myself in informal speech. But AHD4 says writers
>> who use it that way are likely to be "accused of illiteracy
>> or worse." (I can't think of anything worse for a writer.)
>> So I make writers use the formal locution, except in
>> dialogue, of course.

>That (mutatis mutandis) describes my own attitude in almost forty years of
>teaching--though I should have insisted on "stricter" rather than "more
>strict" ... It's a bold line to take with alert and cocky teenage boys, who
>sometimes spotted my own lapses. But the more they spotted the more
>gratifying, of course.

>Alan Jones