["ahem" e]
Mav,
Helen of Troy brought this up over in the icon thread, but want to make sure you (and all other interested folks, which is probably the large majority of y'all) see it: the April issue of Harper's magazine carries an essay by David Foster Wallace called "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars Over Usage." Indeed, as Helen mentioned, it is lengthy and footnote-filled (which the magazine points out with glee) but it looks like some juicy reading. The essay's hook is Garner's
A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford Univ. Press), which I haven't seen yet but plan on finding.
Wallace warns us that offering counsel on the finer points of U.S. English is Preaching to the Choir (i.e. nobody's gonna be interested except those of us who read William Safire's column on language in the Sunday NYTimes magazine, for example) but oh, well,
noblesse oblige, I guess.
Can you get Harper's over there in the Old Country?
