Grammar girl here, this week I have an excerpt from Bill Walsh's new book, Yes, I could

care less.

If you get upset when people say they could care less, when they mean they couldn't

care less, or if you think it's a silly peeve, stay tuned.

Now, don't get me wrong.

Could care less is hardly the most pressing issue in modern English usage or even my biggest

pet peeve.

Yes, I could care less, but I could also care more.

I don't like to brag, but I'd say my level of caring is precisely where it should

be.

Still, the phrase is a handy litmus test.

So basic, and yet people get so acidic about it.

In this corner are the sticklers, the prescriptivists.

We are the copy editors, English teachers, usage mavens, armchair grammarians and others,

who revel in do's and don'ts, and in our own opinions, who prescribe usage.

If you're a stickler, you do plore the idea of using could care less, to mean couldn't

care less.

What could be more obvious than a preference for saying what you mean over saying the

exact opposite?

Quote one of the surest ways to show the world that you are a slip-shod stylist, says Charles

Harrington Elster in the Accidents of Style, is to write, I could care less, instead of

I couldn't care less, unquote.

...