There are three types of people in the world.

One, the grammarian schoolmarmes who love to lecture others condescendingly for their perceived sins against grammar like,

don't end a sentence with a preposition.

Two, those of us who see the schoolmarmes as would-be authoritarians, who are peddling the very sort of bloody nonsense up with which we will not put.

And three, people who didn't understand that joke.

But if you're the third type, what are you doing in my audience?

For the rest of us, I've just read a deeply fascinating and provocative book

that affirms something I've been striving to articulate for three decades.

So join me today as I explore David Crystal's The Fight for English and discover what the

glorious anarchy of language has to teach us about the beautiful, spontaneous order that defines

our daily existence.

Music spontaneous order that defines our daily existence. You're listening to the Corbett Report.

CorbettReport.com

Welcome back, friends.

Welcome back to another edition of The Corporate Report. I'm your host, James Corbett ofcorbettReport.com coming to you, as always, from the sunny climbs of Western Japan, here in May of 2006, with episode 501 of the Corporate Report podcast, The Fight for English.

And as you almost certainly don't remember, I had the occasion about a decade ago to record

a short, pithy, but deeply felt message here in the sunny climes of Western Japan about the

anarchy of language.

Grammar Nazis, we all know them, those people who fly into

apoplectic fits of rage at a misplaced comma, people who can't countenance a misspelled word,

people who will dismiss entire arguments because of a greengrocer's apostrophe. Well, here's a little

tidbit to send any would-be grammar Nazi in your life into a fit

...