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Still, at year's end, neither wordsmiths nor comedians have the power of the people. Some of the favorite phrases of 1977 will make it to the lexicons; most will wither before the new year ends. Pessimists have a point when they refer to the new excrescences of television ego-talk. But optimists are not wrong when they find clearer days on Capitol Hill and a tonic absence of Viet Nam euphemisms and campus-v.-cops rhetoric. "Things are improving," says TV Pundit Edwin Newman (A Civil Tongue): "Schools are finally doing what they ought to do, teaching the basic English that we have neglected for too long. But," he admits, "the headmaster at one school recently told his faculty, 'There should always be something ongoing going on.' So we can hardly be complacent."
Thus both sides can take—or lose—heart. In the hallowed jargon of yesterday, herewith the bottom line: "Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?" That, too, can be read backward and forward.