Grammar Bullyery?

DENIED

BLUF:

• Don't do it.

This article satisfies Squid Commo Objective #2: Suffer not bullyery.

"He is not well bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others." 

  - Poor Richard's Almanack

Any respectable martial art would admonish its students not to use their newfound power to pick on others. Consider yourself admonished. Work to improve yourself, but don't go around criticizing or ridiculing others for what you think is poor language.

Yes, that includes eyeball rolling, which I feel is a sign that one's optic nerves may not have anything substantial to attach to, and writing [sic] when quoting one's inferiors.

1. One reason is that you might be wrong. Learn from the mistake that an Army instructor made one summer. We all had to read a memo on how to behave if we were ever captured. In it he saw the statement, "Never agree not to escape." He wrote "double negative" over it indignantly, in ink, no less. Well, he was wrong. It's bad enough that some poor clerk had to retype the memo unnecessarily, but a big part of this guy's job was to evaluate Army officers' communication skills. He knew something about double negatives, but he didn't understand them very well. What he did is not unlike some rookie running out and picking fights because he learned a new kick in karate class. Sometimes you know just enough to embarrass yourself.

2. Another reason is that running around correcting people places you in the undesirable position of having to be right all the time. Once you strap on the holsters of intolerant correctness, you have to watch your back at every turn. Young wordslingers will be stalking you, looking for a chance to gun you down. You get cautious, even paranoid, and that tends to take all the fun out of it. And it must be fun for you to get good at it. 

3. As you get more advanced in PUG, you'll find that there's often room for informed disagreement. It's difficult, or at least intellectually dishonest, to slap people around with hard and fast rules where relatively few exist.

4. The best reason, though, is that, unless it's your responsibility to train the folks you're slapping around, it really serves no good purpose. So don't menace the unlettered unnecessarily. Be the admiration of your 360-degree feedback circle. Wow them with your superior communication skills and your benevolence.

Bonus Learning

Just in case you're wondering...

"Never agree not to escape" has two negatives, but they negate two different things, not each other. Never negates agree, and not negates escape. This is not what we call a double negative. It's just two negatives. Double negatives conflict. "Don't never agree" would be a double negative. Both negatives negate agree and, as a result, cancel out to yield simply "Agree."

But... 

Surprise! Just as the NRA would suggest, double negatives don't kill; people who own double negatives kill. That is, double negatives can be used for good.

To correct an intentional double negative, remove both negatives. (Although it's debatable that this type of double negative even needs correcting.) In our case, that leaves us with, "Agree to escape," which is certainly not what the author intended.

To correct the unintentional double negative, you remove one of the negatives. When we do that to our statement, we get either "Never agree to escape" or "Agree not to escape."

Ain't neither of those what the author intended. So it's not incorrect after all. Not hardly.

Warning to My Students

Too bad for you.

It's my job to instruct you in the ways of the educated. Just because I'm a management professor doesn't mean I won't be all over you and your lazy communication skills like stink on your transcripts. All college courses are communication-skills courses.*

Besides, much of a manager's effectiveness hinges on clear communication. And poor communication skills is the number one complaint that colleges of business get from employers 

Fairly warned be ye, says I.

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