“Language doesn't belong to grammarians, linguists, wordsmiths, writers, or editors. It belongs to the people who use it. It goes where people want it to go, and, like a balky mule, you can't make it go where it doesn't want to go.” PeopleWantUseLanguageEditorsMulesLinguists Book:Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language Source: Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language
“Warped with satisfactions and terrors, woofed with too many ambiguities and too few certainties, life can be lived best not when we have the answers - because we will never have those - but when we know enough to live it right out to the edges, edges sometimes marked by other people, sometimes showing only our own footprints.” PeopleKnowsLifeSometimesEnoughAnswersEdgesTerrorSatisfactionCertaintyAmbiguityFootprint Author:Rosalie Maggio
“There are complaints that it's hard to remember what you can say and what you can't, which words are 'in' for certain groups and which words are not. And yet we started out learning that the 'kitty' on the sidewalk was actually a squirrel, we learned to differentiate between fire trucks and school buses, and many people today know the difference between linguini, fettucini, and rotini. The same people who say they can't remember the 'right' terms in referring to people are often whizzes at remembering which professional sports teams have moved where and are now called what.” PeopleKnowsHardTodaySchoolRememberPoliticalCertainSportsTermDifferencesFireGroupsTeamMovedBusComplaintsTruckPolitical CorrectnessReferringSidewalkSquirrelsDifferentiateSports TeamKittiesProfessional SportsSchool Bus Author:Rosalie Maggio