Education: The Danger of Dufferism

Historian Jacques Barzun of Columbia University is one professor who does not mind getting from his window cleaner a note like this: "The windows have been cleaned Wed. 12:30 p.m. Your maid was their to veryfey the statement." That sort of thing, says Barzun in the Atlantic Monthly, may be bad writing, but it is nevertheless harmless. The real danger to language "does not come from such trifles. It comes rather from the college-bred millions who . . . circulate the prevailing mixture of jargon, cant, vogue words, and loose syntax that passes for...

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