Thomas M. Reid

A professional acquaintance and former coworker of mine recently Tweeted that he found it difficult to believe how hard some people want to argue over whether 2009 was the end of a decade or not and suggested that the pedants get over it. This gave me pause because of the parenthetical comment I included in my previous post. Was he talking about me? (I doubt it; even though he knows me on a professional level, my blog is too new and it’s unlikely that he has seen it yet.) Even if he wasn’t, could I be lumped into that category?

A pedant is defined on dictionary.com as 1) a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning; 2) a person who overemphasizes rules or minor details; 3) a person who adheres rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense; and 4) Obsolete. a schoolmaster.

Wow. I definitely could qualify for all four of these definitions, if you really wanted to stretch things and consider my role as “teacher” to my three kids. I do often make a display of my learning. But is it excessive or inappropriate? I do emphasize rules and minor details. Is it too much? I do adhere rigidly to book knowledge. Has it been at the expense of my common sense? Last night, as I went to bed, I didn’t know, but I was very troubled by the suggestion. Is my insistence that people get things right a little too anal? I needed to think on this and figure out why I was so bothered by my friend’s assertion.

Here’s the thing: I know I emphasize rules and minor details. As an editor, it’s part of my job, how I make a living. It’s what I do. Do I need to do it all the time, even when just out and about? Probably not. It’s not necessary to point out every flaw in the written word we see in ads, signage, and emails. It’s not going to change anything, and you could argue the case that I am only engaging in an excessive or inappropriate display of my learning (though I would argue that it is a useful educational tool for practicing spelling and grammar with my children). So yes, I suppose I am a pedant.

“Well, crap,” I thought as I lay in bed last night. Who wants to be labeled in such a negative way? Especially when I can’t, if I’m honest with myself, refute it? I suppose the only thing to do is to stop being so . . . well, pedantic . . . about things. Just go with the flow, let it wash over me like water off a duck’s back and all that. But I didn’t want to. I was pissed. And I  wanted to understand why.

The conclusion I finally came to is that I’m proud of my knowledge. I’m proud that I understand the intricacies of the English language, or the fact that, when we count the years in a decade, we start with 1 and end with 10. This learning is what defines me, gives me power, establishes my worth in society. You might see that as egotistical, and you’re probably right, but consider: during my formative years, in public school, the greatest, most positive feedback I could get was from my teachers. Why? Because I got the answers right. I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, and people took notice and congratulated me. So when I’m being a bit pedantic, I’m actually just reinforcing that sense of self-worth. I’m saying, “Hey, world, check me out. I know my shit. Aren’t you proud of me?”

And yeah, not everyone is going to react well to such brazen snobbery. I get that. It’s the age-old incongruity of social values: we heap praise and adoration on all the wrong people. Peyton Manning can heave a football forty yards with uncanny accuracy, and we tell him he’s our hero and throw money at him. Jason Statham blows some stuff up and drives really fast on the big screen and we fall all over ourselves proclaiming his coolness. Al Gore makes a passing comment about his involvement in technological advances and we deride him for nerdiness and accuse him of claiming to invent the Internet. The jock is loved, the class clown worshiped, the teacher’s pet scorned. It’s not new, I’m not disillusioned that it’s going to change any time soon, and it’s not what’s bothering me.

What’s bothering me is where it came from this time around. I expect society at large — the faceless, nameless masses whom I don’t know — to behave in such a manner. In the same way we have no qualms against honking at or shooting the bird at the random driver who cuts us off on the highway, I understand that strangers will not react well to being told they’ve got their facts wrong, or they can’t properly use their mother tongue. No one likes to be made to feel stupid, regardless of the accuracy of the appellation.

But I don’t expect to get accused of pedanthood by someone I considered “on my side.” The person who Tweeted this works in the same industry I do; he’s intelligent, assiduous, and seems to care a great deal about quality and integrity. I would not have expected him to dismiss the debate over this issue so quickly. I’m sure he had no intention of insulting me personally. But it feels like a betrayal. It feels like someone I thought I had common cause with stabbed me in the back. That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? Feeling that way over a debate about how we think of decades is a bit . . . small-minded.

I guess. But it bothers me that people who “ought to know better” seem so willing to dismiss stuff like this as “no big deal.” It’s not the way we think of decades that truly bothers me; it’s the blasé attitude we have about it all. When did it become OK to let errors get off scot-free? When did it stop mattering whether we were right or wrong about something that can be fact-checked easily? How come usage is allowed to trump accuracy? When did the group of us who actually care about such things shrink so much?

And therein lies the real crux of this whole post: Am I a pedant because I cling tenaciously to outdated, old-fashioned ideals? Have I surrendered my common sense in favor of trying to be right and making sure the world knows it, even when the world doesn’t care, or worse yet, dismisses me as trivial? If so, then my self-worth is about to take a hell of a beating.