'Plain in Thy Neatness'

Over the weekend I read a book review full of enthusiastic approval that was so poorly written, anything the critic had to say was immediately nullified by his own incompetence. Why take the word of a critic who can’t write? This was a matter of fundamental things like noun-verb agreement, spelling and the refusal to resist a cliché. There’s nothing new about this, of course. In the issue of The Tatler published on September 28, 1710, Jonathan Swift sets up his essay with a letter he received complaining of “the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style.” Swift, of course, is the letter’s author, as he is of the letter excerpt included by the first fictional correspondent – a parody of illiterate prose, followed by this commentary: “[T]hese are the beauties introduced to supply the want of wit, sense, humour, and learning, which formerly were looked upon as qualifications…

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