The Washington times., 1916-01-15
The photographer" Defends Val
iantly His Use of "People."

/
There are three kinds of people in
| the world: /. the Wills: 2. the Won'ts.
! and 3, the Can'ts. The first succeed:
| the second fail; the third waver. and
! like the spider. lead life of sus-
pense. In making use Of their native
| tongue, the Wills follow the natural
] laws OF speech. the Won'ts follow
| the artificial laws OF the grammar
ians. while the Can'ts. in the torment
| Of suspense-uncertain vacillating,
| perplexed--waver between the other
! two.
or these three kinds Of people, that
kind which champions the science of
| speaking and writing correctly is al
ways the most aggreSsive 1t Is from
/ this kind that We get the ipse diXit:
! Except in Colloquial use il IL never
! allowable TO use people in connec-
! tion with numeral adjective But
we have reason to be thankful that
speech came first and the grammar
! ian after and thus usage-the best
usagc-governs. ana practice triunphs
! over preCept.
! Judging from the contents OF recent
| communications to The Times, 1t
! would seem that some OF your cor
| respondents have quaint ideas Of the
, functions Of the photographer. One
| writes Not even the photographer of
I the Literary Digest to whose atten-
! ton directed the error, has attempt
ed to defend it," Alas, poor leXicog-
, rapher. If he were to undertake 10
consider. discuss. and defend all the
questions submitted to him, his Easy
J Chair" would become as comfortable
rs pamiens' bed of steel. Besides. il
| L. very unwise to expect him to eN-
press any opinion on English forms
| for his province is that of recorder
not that OF arbiter. lie registers the
,.I b 4. a,
II reflected by the speech and in the
literatur" Of the people.
Now. sir. as to the function Of the
grammarian: hold his relation TO the
language to be similar to that Of the
surgeon. His science is purely ana
tomiCal, and like his Confrere OF thu
; SCalpel he must have a corpus befor,
| he can get to work. That corpus il
his case il speech. and his instrumen
| is the pen II is not for him TO die
tate what men should say, but t,
state what they do say, and to tr!
TO harmonic what Is said with tn
t rules which he has formulated. or t
modify the rules so that they shall
tit the case. In this case as in man!
another. the punishment must ii tn
! crime.
To one who strives TO pursue tn
even tenor Of his way. il comes
great surprise to learn that the ori
gin OF a discussion can be traced .
"an 'ad' of the Funk and Wagnall
|, Company urging the reader to ID
what 100000 other people are doini
read the Literary Digest" To hir
it is surprising that there should h
any discussion at all The statemen
is so clear, so definite. 40 incisivf
that he must he poor linguist. in
, deed. who would assail it, Here i
may not be inapropoS to say that tn
writer OF the statement alone is tn
, best Judge Of what he has said. If
express the thought h" had in minG
he has every reason 10 felicitate him
self on the happily turned rAras
that has attracted so much attention
We. who speak and write English
should all remember that the correct
ness of Il form or OF a CONSTRUCTION
is not impaired because nothing anal
oEouS TO it exists in the Language
= any more than that the CORRECTNESS
of a word Is to he challenged becaus
there j. no other in the language tina
resembles I, in sound or spelling.
n Finally. sir. let me offer to those Q
, your readers who agree with you. not
, ! withStanding the assertion made tina
EVERY Washington editorial stat
5 hats condemned the sentence as inele
= giant English" the consolation tina
= comes from the knowledge that tn
I minority j. invariably in the right.
y Mr.. Francis dc Sales Ryan tells Il
that "it is never allowable to us
y people in connection with numert
II adjective." II that he so, then wins
!. about the following:
= And there returned OF the peopl
- twenty. ana two thousand; and theI
= rcmaived ter thousand Judges vii:
. And the king Rood by the gat
y side. and all tn" people came out h
hundreds and by thousands. I'll San
# ucl Nviii:4.
n 81 will not be afraid of ten tho,
# saudS OF people. HAT have set then
r. selves against me round about
4 psalms Sc