The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published – How Webster's Third Sparked the Great Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Grammar Battle of 1961 - Softcover

Skinner, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062027492 ISBN 13: 9780062027498

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2013

Synopsis

“It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper….David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection.”

—Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman

The Story of Ain’t by David Skinner is the captivating true chronicle of the creation of Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961, the most controversial dictionary ever published. Skinner’s surprising and engaging, erudite and witty account will enthrall fans of Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything, and The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, as it explores a culture in transition and the brilliant, colorful individuals behind it. The Story of Ain’t is a smart, often outrageous, and altogether remarkable tale of how egos, infighting, and controversy shaped one of America’s most authoritative language texts, sparking a furious language debate that the late, great author David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) once called “the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars.” 

• A Gripping Language Controversy: Discover why the 1961 publication of Merriam-Webster’s Third was called a 'calamity' and sparked a national debate over the very soul of the English language.
• The History of the English Language: Go behind the scenes of dictionary making to meet the brilliant, colorful, and warring personalities who fought to define how Americans speak.
• Prescriptivism vs. Descriptivism: Explore the central battle between traditionalists who believe a dictionary should prescribe correct usage and the modern linguists who argue it must only describe the language as it’s actually used.
• American Cultural History: A compelling slice of mid-century American history, this chronicle reveals how cultural shifts, world wars, and changing social norms fueled the 'Usage Wars.'

About this title

About the Author

David Skinner is a writer and editor living in Alexandria, Virginia. He writes about language, culture, and his life as a husband, father, and suburbanite. He has been a staff editor at the Weekly Standard, for which he still writes, and an editor of Doublethink magazine. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New Atlantis, Slate, the Washington Times, the American Spectator, and many other publications. Skinner is the editor of Humanities magazine, which is published by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary.

From the Back Cover

Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by editor Philip Gove, Webster's Third broke with tradition, adding thousands of new words and eliminating "artificial notions of correctness," basing proper usage on how language was actually spoken. The dictionary's revolutionary style sparked what David Foster Wallace called "the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars." Critics bayed at the dictionary's permissive handling of ain't. Literary intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald believed the abandonment of the old standard represented the unraveling of civilization.

Entertaining and erudite, The Story of Ain't describes a great societal metamorphosis, tracing the fallout of the world wars, the rise of an educated middle class, and the emergence of America as the undisputed leader of the free world, and illuminating how those forces shaped our language. Never before or since has a dictionary so embodied the cultural transformation of the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062027492
• ISBN 13: 9780062027498
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368