Bad language? There’s no such thing, swears a reformed pedant

• Last Updated: January 31. 2009 5:20PM UAE / January 31. 2009 1:20PM GMT

Stephen Fry is a British actor, broadcaster and writer with the silkiest of touches with words. He speaks and writes beautifully enunciated and cleverly embroidered English – much more pleasing to the ear and eye, some would argue, than the Queen’s English – without trace of grammatical or semantic imperfection.

Should anyone campaigning for the “correct” use of language, from disciples of HW Fowler to Lynne Truss, wish to enlist just one like-minded soul, Fry would surely be the obvious candidate.

Would he not relish the task of raiding greengrocers’ stalls to remove rogue apostrophes? Would he not consider it a noble duty to unsplit all infinitives, defeat each attempt to misplace an “only” and leap without mercy on every stray preposition?

No, he most certainly would not.

For Stephen Fry has declared himself an implacable enemy of linguistic pedantry. That puts Truss, the ghost of Fowler and perhaps even The National’s “My word” columnist in his line of fire.

I know about this because an English teacher in Abu Dhabi has kindly sent me a link to a podcast in which Fry contends forcefully that pretty much anything goes without use of language becoming abuse.

It reminds me of a conversation between two English folk musicians, Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. Carthy wanted to try something different with a tune, but needed his friend’s reassurance that it would be acceptable. “You can do anything you like with music,” Swarbrick replied. “It won’t mind.”

The anecdote would appeal to Fry, whom I know from our one meeting to share my affection for folk music.

But he would have no sympathy for many of the views I have expressed on this page each week since our Saturday edition first appeared in November.

Fry is, on his own account, a reformed pedant. He recognises his brand of language as “an English English salted, spiced, pickled, seasoned, braised … bearing all the flavours of my class, gender, education, nature”.

Having “outgrown that silly approach to language” that once made him insist on none being followed by is, not are, he would run a mile if invited to join a group pestering supermarkets to observe the distinction between less and fewer.

Fry’s lament is that “the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way”. For all their delusions of superiority, he wonders, do they actually take pleasure in words? He doubts it.

Not every reader will take my word for it, but I do claim to apply much flexibility when encouraging journalists at The National to adopt a clear and reasonably uniform use of English.

My style guide nevertheless contains some rules, and I make no apology for trying to enforce them.

But Fry grants me a possible escape clause, almost as an aside in his combative but highly entertaining talk, from the general denunciation of pedants as a “sorry bunch of semi-educated losers”.

People hoping to pass exams or impress prospective employers, he concedes, naturally take care with what they write; most of us “accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances”.

Indeed. And it is the acknowledgement of this need that takes Fry closer than he may like to the position of the fair-minded language stylist.

If he finds no fault with the choice of a suit rather than jeans for a job interview, or the avoidance of spelling mistakes in English Literature finals, how can he honestly quarrel with a serious newspaper that strives to express itself in the most consistent and elegant terms possible?

Colin Randall is the executive editor of The National. He may be contacted at crandall@thenational.ae