Dennis Baron
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drgrammar.bsky.social
Dennis Baron
@drgrammar.bsky.social
500 followers 140 following 530 posts
I write about language and … language and law (free speech and regulation); gender (pronouns!); tech (how tech affects readers and writers); language reform; and language policing. All from a historical perspective.
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drgrammar.bsky.social
Clip from the Speaker Request Form that she received and posted on scribd. Utah's HB 261 guarantees free speech to invited speakers, but fearing legislative backlash, the school is imposing these bans on speakers. Thus HB 261 chills free speech without actually violating First Amendment protections!
A list of banned terms and concepts, including DEI, anti-racism, bias, CRT, implicit bias, oppression, intersectionality, prohibited discriminatory practices, racial privilege, promoting stereotypes
December 4, 2025 at 8:34 PM
drgrammar.bsky.social
Here, I fixed it for you: The near extinction of copy editors continues to have severe consequences.
November 29, 2025 at 8:38 PM
drgrammar.bsky.social
The question is moot.
Washington Post article headline "jury finds d. c. sandwich guy not guilty of assaulting officer.
November 6, 2025 at 8:29 PM
drgrammar.bsky.social
Plus I am anxious about the future.
November 5, 2025 at 12:37 AM
drgrammar.bsky.social
otoh
a photo of two apples and two oranges
November 5, 2025 at 12:37 AM
drgrammar.bsky.social
Video capture of the Böcker Agilo descending with two thieves and the loot.
The lift descending with 2 of the thieves and their loot.
October 23, 2025 at 11:14 PM
drgrammar.bsky.social
beats me why the 🐝 won't accept eocene.
October 16, 2025 at 12:51 AM
drgrammar.bsky.social
Now that I've had time to check here's what I wrote back in 1990. BTW, in a conference talk I gave about this in the 1980s, session chair John Algeo, who was then editor of American Speech, changed my title from "A historic..." to "An historic." Which only goes to show how entrenched this was.
The rule, according to Josephine Turck Baker (1904), requires an rather than a before a word beginning with an h that is pronounced, if the initial syllable of that word is unaccented: for example, an historic, but a history. The practice, which Baker favors, dates from a time when the initial h of words borrowed from Latin and French was always silent. However for most of these words aspiration has long since been restored, rendering an phonetically inappropriate. As early as 1882 Alfred Ayres opposes this use of an as obsolete. Henry Fowler (1926) agrees, calling an historic pedantic. Evans and Evans (1957) label the usage archaic; Theodore Bernstein (1965) claims it is improper on both sides of the Atlantic; and Morris and Morris (1975) find it one of the commonest mistakes in English today. Yet the form, perceived by many to be stylish, if not mandatory, persists despite requests from the usage critics that we relax our guard. Surveying a panel of teachers, writers, business executives, and linguists, the linguist Sterling Leonard (1932) reports an historical ranked as the most correct of two hundred thirty examples of disputed usage. Even Jimmy Breslin, whose journalism and fiction generally reveal a keen ear for colloquial English, writes jarringly in a recent novel of “an Hasidic Jew.” (1982, 199)
October 14, 2025 at 3:40 PM