Newly invented fake prescriptive poppycock

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Allan Metcalf has done a remarkable thing over on Lingua Franca, in the post you can see here: he has announced a contest in which readers have to think up new fake prescriptive rules ("The rule has to be a brand new one, not announced in any previous usage manual, but—and this is the hard part—it has to look venerable… a rule that appears to have been followed by careful writers all along, while being misused or ignored by careless writers"), and he's actually got his commenters doing it, and some of them are brilliant. They are actually thinking up fake prescriptive poppycock that you might almost actually believe if you didn't know better. Check it out.



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