I really like Lynne Truss. Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves is one of my favorite books ever. I’d like to think that would be so even if I hadn’t majored in English. The book itself is one big rant on behalf of better grammar. She is militant, persuasive, and funny. And that seems to be important. She isn’t mean. She has our best interest at heart.

I thought of that book this week when I came across this grammar rant about the double space after a period. As you can see, I’m one of those dreaded “double-spacers”. And I have deep-seeded reasons for doing it beyond “that’s how I was taught.” It has to do with clarity of communication. But I digress. This rant by Farhad Manjoo has none of the skill or persuasiveness of Truss’ work. When it was pointed out that he is intending to write a rant (as a genre, perhaps?) implying that it is supposed to be funny, then it made a bit more sense to me, but it wasn’t going to work. The reason? It wasn’t just that he was being sure of himself or that he was being smug. He was actually making an inaccurate claim: that there is only one right way to do typography-based grammar.

Regardless of what Strunk and White might try to tell you from the grave, there isn’t only one way to do grammar and punctuation. That is one thing your junior high English teacher got wrong. There are “best practices” based on your industry. There are guidelines that match up to your current situtation. But there is no eternal “right” and “wrong”. Why? Because language evolves with the community. Things become “right” when we start doing it and “wrong” when we don’t.

As I was reflecting on all the arguing that this article has started, it occurred to me that I was in a different position than I normally am in: defending the majority in support of a modern practice that isn’t historical. I was, in essence, defending mainline Christianity’s continued use of Morning Prayer styled worship space or conservative evangelical’s centrality of the sermon or Roman Catholic’s policy on married priests against the historic arguments that make these things look ridiculous. And why was that?

The guy’s rant was sophomoric.

It wasn’t some well-reasoned thing. I found myself on the other side, defending my own practice with the ridiculous “we’ve always done it that way!” simply because I didn’t like the way he argued. And then I took the next leap.

Maybe this is what many Christians feel when they hear people talk about the emerging church. Maybe they hear the stench of loathing and self-righteousness mixed with hostility toward the status quo with a bit of a bluff: arguing that everybody is doing it (or at least the cool kids). Maybe those of us that participate in (or near) the emerging church sound like jackasses.

I don’t think we do. But maybe the conversation isn’t always as productive as it needs to be. And maybe, like Manjoo, we are too tired of playing defense against the haters, that we have lost sight at what a truly persuasive and convicting argument looks like. And maybe we’re tired of those sophomoric defenses like “we’ve always done it that way!”. Maybe it’s time to go back to Truss to see how it’s done.

I’m tempted to be a one-spacer, but not because of Farhad Manjoo, but because it is becoming the new normal.

And language evolves with the community.