;
or should one say nothing of the smoke nuisance in Chicago because
more light and heat penetrate its murky atmosphere than are to be found
in cities only a few miles farther north? The truth is, we must regard
the bad spelling nuisance, the bad grammar nuisance, the inartistic and
rambling language nuisance, precisely as we would the smoke nuisance,
the sewer-gas nuisance, the stock-yards' smell nuisance. Some dainty
people prefer pure air and correct language; but we now recognize that
purity is something more than an esthetic fad, that it is essential to our
health and well-being, and therefore it becomes a matter of universal
public interest, in language as well as in air.

There is a general belief that while bad air may be a positive evil
influence, incorrect use of language is at most no more than a negative
evil: that while it may be a good thing to be correct, no special harm
is involved in being incorrect. Let us look into this point.

While language as the medium of thought may be compared to air as
the medium of the sun's influence, in other respects it is like the
skin of the body; a scurvy skin shows bad blood within, and a scurvy
language shows inaccurate thought and a confused mind. And as a
disease once fixed on the skin reacts and poisons the blood in
turn as it has first been poisoned by the blood, so careless use of
language if indulged reacts on the mind to make it permanently and
increasingly careless, illogical, and inaccurate in its thinking.

The ordinary person will probably not believe this, because he conceives
of good use of language as an accomplishment to be learned from books,
a prim system of genteel manners to be put on when occasion demands,
a sort of superficial education in the correct thing, or, as the boys
would say, "the proper caper." In this, however, he is mistaken.
Language which expresses the thought with strict logical accuracy is
correct language, and language which is sufficiently rich in its resources
to express thought fully, in all its lights and bearings, is effective
language. If the writer or speaker has a sufficient stock of words and
forms at his disposal, he has only to use them in a strictly logical way
and with sufficient fulness to be both correct and effective. If his mind
can always be trusted to work accurately, he need not know a word of
grammar except what he has imbibed unconsciously in getting his stock of
words and expressions. Formal grammar