In language and editing, descriptivism and prescriptivism can affect how editors approach their work. But sometimes those terms can become a little muddled.
In part 1, I shared an example of how we can misunderstand descriptivism and prescriptivism and offered more accurate definitions for each. In part 2, I’ll dive into the practical implications of these concepts, exploring how to balance these approaches in your editing practice.
What Does This Have to Do with Copyediting?
Critics of false descriptivism (often also followers of false prescriptivism) love to point out how descriptivists abandon their theories whenever they write. “They follow the rules then!” they say. “Rules of proper usage are tacit conventions,” says Steven Pinker in “False Fronts in the Language Wars,” a response to an earlier language skirmish. He continues:
Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things—not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice.
Language usage and writing styles are such conventions. Writers—or editors—can break them, but they risk breaking down communication as well.
That doesn’t mean “every pet peeve, bit of grammatical folklore, or dimly remembered lesson from Miss Grundy’s classroom is worth keeping,” Pinker continues. “Many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by English’s greatest writers for centuries.”
Copyeditors must think. We can’t blindly follow rules because they make us feel better or make the editing easier. We must understand the rules and the reasons behind them. Otherwise, how will we know when to apply them and when to discard them?
Editing students and new editors lean more toward prescriptivism, some going so far as to fit the stereotype, because it makes editing easier: follow these concrete rules and all will be well. It’s comforting and mostly unconscious. As we continue to edit, though, we’re exposed to different ideas, and we learn that some of those rules are not as hard and fast as we once believed. When I taught Copyediting III for UC San Diego’s copyediting program, my students read the introductory essays in Garner’s Modern English Usage and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, as well as some articles that discuss this language “war.” It gives them an overview of the disagreement and hopefully starts adding shades of gray to their black-and-white vision of language.
What’s a Copyeditor to Do?
It comes down to this: Everyone has prejudices about language. We more easily accept people who write like we do. We label those who use language differently from us as “others” or “them.” We define ourselves by the company we keep and the company we purposefully don’t keep. That’s as true in language as in anything else we undertake.
When writers publish, readers will judge them based not just on what they write but on how they write it.
Part of your job as a copyeditor is to help the author fit in with their desired audience. In this way, the language won’t distract the audience from the message. To do that job, you must dispense with the false definitions of prescriptivism and descriptivism. False prescriptivism, more properly called peevery, can make an editor’s view too narrow. False descriptivism, more accurately called permissivism, can result in flabby, vague writing, at best.
Prescriptivism and descriptivism are much closer to each other than to their false definitions. Both depend on evidence. Both are useful in editing. Prescriptivism brings in conventions that help the author communicate with the reader. Descriptivism identifies areas when it’s OK to break the rules and still ensure communication.
Copyeditors should be able to deploy both in service to the manuscript.
A version of this article originally published in the October–November 2016 issues of Copyediting newsletter.
