Opinion

Anton Savage: I’m a card-carrying grammar pedant, and proud of it. Or are I?

It’s difficult to care deeply, perhaps too deeply, about how to use language correctly – and then realise you are not the only lexophile in the village

I viscerally believe it is my civic duty to shout at the radio in a quixotic struggle to bring the world perfect syntax

I’m a little ashamed. I like to think of myself as a grammar pedant, so I was deeply unsettled by the discovery this week that the New York Times has a lexophile competition in which I did not compete – worse, of which I had never heard.

I viscerally believe it is my civic duty to shout at the radio in a quixotic struggle to bring the world perfect syntax. “‘Whether’ is not an alternative ...