Date:  Tue, 30 Apr 1996 08:39:28 -0400

From:  David Muschell <dmuschel[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MAIL.GAC.PEACHNET.EDU>

Subject: Re: I wish I may, I wish I might (revisited)



>No, I'm not revisiting myself. but I thought the participants in our earlier

>discussion might (and indeed MAY) be interested to know that it's the topic of

>this week's Safire "On Language" column, under the header "May Day! Might

>Day!" What set him off was a comment by Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief

>of the U.S. News & World Report, that a certain Whitewater report "may well

>have been written in invisible ink for all the attention it has had." In the

>process of casting his semantic nets thither and yon for awhile, Safire refers

>to Zuckerman's "misuse of MAY", which should have been "MIGHT". I suppose

>it's just the prescriptivist version of the split we observed, with Safire

>(like most of us) among the old fogeys and Zuckerman (although he presumably

>can't use age as an excuse) among the innovators.



Ah, the rule-makers and rule-defenders: we know that without them language

would surely fall into anarchy! But should we scold Safire for using the

phoneticized English version of the French "m'aider" just to get an

attention-grabbing headline? Such purists must know that language and its

rules never change...He might have been indicating a celebratory feeling

about the fertility and burgeoning of language since the capital letters

might be an allusion to tomorrow's more pagan festivities...Yes, that may

well be.



Forgive: I haven't had time to write in months!



David