It’s my 100th column. What have we learned?

This week grammarians everywhere celebrate a milestone — no, not the collective addition of Galentine’s Day, adorkable, and pumpkin spice to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which was just announced to the delight of Lifetime movie devotees everywhere. Rather, this marks The Inquirer’s 100th grammar column, working hard to make language more precise and more concise since 2018. Congrats, team! We solved grammar.

So, class, what have we learned?

Language is changing really, really quickly

Linguists typically measure language change in decades, if not longer. Among that list of words that Merriam-Webster added this month, several date back to the 19th century. But the pandemic changed everything — including language. Even editors took emergency measures in March 2020, with an unplanned update to the dictionary that included a host of pandemic-related terms. COVID-19 was added to the dictionary faster than any other word in history — though to be fair, it’s only in the internet age that dictionary updates have been published in semi-real time. Maybe if editors had gone a little slower, they would have been thoughtful enough to lowercase covid-19, like every other disease, and not freak us out with screamy all-caps.

On the other hand, with 2½ years’ perspective, maybe some should have been a little more freaked out than they were.

Passive voice: From irresponsible to deadly

Passive voice is indiscriminate and imprecise. It lets you off the hook, whether you’re a cop who’s shooting at protesters (“Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed to Clear Way for Trump Church Photo-Op” was a typical summer 2020 headline, which didn’t mention who was doing the tear-gassing) or a cop who’s killing George Floyd (the original police report of his murder is a tour de force of passive voice). Rather than eschewing responsibility, embrace the accountability that active-voice verbs provide.

Unless, of course, you’re trying to get away with something.

‘Irregardless’: It’s a word

But a stupid one.

Canceling words: Sometimes wise, sometimes performative nonsense.

Certain terms have racist origins, and unpacking those histories makes our language better. When we consign gyp, eenie meenie miney moe, domestic terrorist, and others to the trash, we get smarter and our language gets stronger. But canceling words indiscriminately harms rather than helps, because it ignores those words’ actual meanings in favor of invented outrage. Case in point: Some real estate agents suggested discontinuing use of master bedroom because of master’s association with slavery — a nice idea, but one that was entirely counterfactual (its use long predates slavery). It’s well-intentioned but ill-thought-out efforts like this that end up as easy right-wing talking points complaining about woke culture gone overboard.

Karens gonna Karen

Perhaps no column generated more mail than a 2020 investigation into whether Karen is a slur. Many readers really wanted to play the victim here, but — unlike actual slurs that haters wield to exert power over another person — an epithet that lacks the power to discriminate is just an insult.

Guess who was really mad about that?

Readers think everyone else’s grammar is worse than ever

And they take all their ire out on newscasters. But the vast majority of the letters in my inbox that complain about others’ grammar? Brimming with typos. I’d say you know who you are, but you most certainly don’t.

Guess we have more work to do. Maybe after another 100 columns, things will get better.

The Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, looks at how language, grammar, and punctuation shape our world, and appears biweekly. Send comments, questions, and haplology to jeff@theangrygrammarian.com.