The acrid views expressed about colloquial speech in online comments sections today is a relatively new view of language, fostered by a combination of bourgeois sensibility and the dominance of unchanging documents such as dictionaries, both of which subtly but powerfully distract us from the dynamic reality of language’s essential mechanisms.

it would have seemed both natural and literate. The old rule is simple: Don’t use “like” in any case where “as if” or “as though” would fit comfortably.

So many of the words we introduce have killjoy histories. When we use them, we are heard as making a point, a sore point, although in time some of them become less pointed, more habitual.

People constantly make the mistake of thinking that their words on the page should be the equivalent of dress-up clothes. Completely different from everyday. A little stiff, a little remote, proper, mannered, a world away from the T-shirt of ordinary talk.