I was perusing Dustbury.com today, as I do every day (and I mean perusing, as in “reading thoroughly”), when I was struck by one of Charles’s posts (that’s Charles’s, the possessive form of Charles).

The post which piqued my interest was this one, about some typically inane Tulsa World editorial. (To pique is to ‘provoke, arouse’; inane means ‘lacking sense or substance.’)

The bit of the post which I really enjoyed was the last sentence, in which Charles chastised the World editors for misusing the phrase “the lion’s share” (which does not mean “a big portion,” but rather means “the entirety”). He linked to this jeremiad on the Washington State Bar Association site, whose author, Robert C. Cumbow, lamented the desuetude of some important semantic distinctions (e.g., the distinction between “e.g.” and “i.e.“).

This post made me realize why I like Dustbury.com so much. It’s not that I find the minutiae of Oklahoma high society so engrossing. No, it’s Charles Hill I keep coming back for, because he is one of the few bloggers I read who actually can write! By “can write,” I do not mean “writes well” (although he does write well); I mean “can write” as in “is able to write.” As in, “knows what the words mean, and how they’re spelled, and how phrases and sentences are punctuated.”

Because writing requires knowledge of the language. Because that’s what writing is. Because that’s what language is. Ignorance of the language one purports to be writing doesn’t make one a bad writer. It makes one a non-writer. An illiterate.

It also made me recall my own pet peeves, such as “enormity” and “fulsome.” But I hope everyone doesn’t go look up what they really mean, because I do so enjoy the unintentional truth-telling arising from their misuse, as when Joshua Micah Marshall says, “Ted Sorensens introduction of [Wesley] Clark was surprisingly fulsome.” Or when Henry Hyde says, “China is one fifth of humanity. Its enormity ensures that there can be no insulating boundary between its internal transformation and the world outside.” Give ‘em hell, Henry! (I wonder what the Chinese translation said?)

Thanks, Charles, for helping me get in touch with my Inner Curmudgeon. The rest of you are now free to look up jeremiad and desuetude. Class dismissed.