The Rule of Petty
In these crazy times where truth seems slippery and squirrely, I feel like we should hang on to whatever bits of linguistic logic and sanity that are still out there. Not that there are many, but those few, man, I’m not letting go.
Everyone else seems to be fine with being untethered, but not me.
Let’s start with how I couldn’t care less. I couldn’t. It is impossible for me to care any less than I currently do about whatever it is that we happen to be talking about. If you tell me that you could care less, then it means that it is, in fact, possible for you to care less, which means that you do care some. Not much of a superlative at all.
Professionally, people ask me to prepare “quick claim” deeds for them all the time. There is nothing fast about these deeds. Indeed[1], there is nothing fast about anything in the law. Really—the mascot of the United States Supreme Court is the tortoise, representing slow deliberation. What my clients really mean is a “quit claim” deed, because they are quitting all claims they have to that piece of property.
Double negatives I can forgive because some other languages use them, even though they’re illogical.
“Could of” and “Should of”? Where do we even start. I know I’m a bit of a snob at times, but if you write could of and should of it means your hearing is fine, but you don’t think about the words you’re using. Because those phrases sound exactly like “Could’ve” and “Should’ve”, the contractions for “could have” and “should have”, which is exactly what they are. ‘Of’ is a preposition expressing the difference between a part and a whole (one-half of the bottle of vodka) or the relationship between a direction and a place (just west of the mental institution). “I could of been a contender” doesn’t make any sense. But “I should have just stayed in bed” makes perfect sense.
“Unique” is like “pregnant”. You either are or aren’t. Merriam-Webster defines unique as “being the only one; sole”[2]. You can’t be very unique any more than you can be very the only one. You’re the only one, you’re one-of-a-kind, or you’re replicated somewhere. Period.
And I know—I KNOW—these are petty, stupid complaints. In a world in which people are dying of hunger and bombs, and being locked up without due process, complaining about people writing “of” instead of “’ve” seems the height of ridiculousness. But hear me out: The rule of law is what will save us, and its lack is what will leave us in anarchy. Rules help us make sense of a disordered world. When the important rules seem like they’ve been cast to the wind, I’ll cling to the unimportant ones. Because the truth is that I could care less. In fact, I care quite a bit.
[1] haha
[2] UNIQUE Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster
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