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History of linguistic prescription in English
Prescription is the formulation of normative rules for language use. This article discusses the history of prescription in English. For a more general discussion see Linguistic prescription.
==Origins==
Languages, especially standard languages or official languages used in courts of law, for administration of government, and for the promulgation of official works, tend to acquire norms and standards over time. Once English became the language of administration of law in England, a form of late Middle English called chancery English became such a standard. When William Caxton introduced printing with movable type into England, the norms of his grammar and spelling were taken largely from chancery English.
However, the "correction" of English grammar was not a large subject of formal study until the 18th century. Poet John Dryden remarked that the grammar in use in his day (second half of the 1600s) was an improvement over the usage of William Shakespeare. Dryden was himself the first to promulgate the rule that a sentence must not end with a preposition. Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary contributed to the standardization of English spelling. More influentially, the first of a long line of prescriptionist usage commentators, Robert Lowth, published ''A Short Introduction to English Grammar'' in 1762. Lowth's grammar is the source of many of the prescriptive shibboleths that are studied in schools and was the first of a long line of usage commentators to judge the language in addition to describing it. For example, the following footnote from his grammar is, in turn, descriptive and prescriptive: "''Whose'' is by some authors made the Possessive Case of ''which'', and applied to things as well as persons; I think, improperly."
Lowth's method included criticising "false syntax"; his examples of false syntax were culled from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and other famous writers. A number of his judgments were reinforced by analogies to Latin grammar, though it was his stated principle that such an analogy should not in itself be the basis for English prescriptions. Thus for example he criticises Addison's sentence "Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case", corresponding, as he says earlier, to an accusative in Latin. (Descriptive critics, on the other hand, would take this example and others as evidence from noted writers that "who" can refer to direct objects in English.) Lowth's ''ipse dixits'' appealed to those who wished for certainty and authority in their language. Lowth's grammar was not written for children; nonetheless, within a decade of its appearance, versions of it were adapted for schools, and Lowth's stylistic opinions acquired the force of law in the classroom.
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