A WORLD WITHOUT ‘WHOM’: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LANGUAGE IN THE BUZZFEED AGE by Emmy J. Favilla

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A WORLD WITHOUT ‘WHOM’: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LANGUAGE IN THE BUZZFEED AGE by

Emmy J. Favilla

Linda Pilliere

To cite this version:

Linda Pilliere. A WORLD WITHOUT ‘WHOM’: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LANGUAGE IN THE BUZZFEED AGE by Emmy J. Favilla. 2019, pp.49. �hal-02482590�

Published in Babel The Language Magazine, November 2019, p.49 https://babelzine.co.uk/babel-no29-november-2019/

A WORLD WITHOUT ‘WHOM’: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LANGUAGE IN THE BUZZFEED AGE

Emmy J. Favilla

Bloomsbury Press, 2017, 392 pages, RRP £12.99 Linda Pillière

Style and usage guides have been setting the standard in writing since the eighteenth century, debating such issues as dangling modifiers, when to use

‘which’ or ‘that’, and whether it should be ‘lie’ or ‘lay’. Some of these old chestnuts have evolved over time. Advice to not split infinitives is a thing of the past, stranding prepositions is something we don’t bat an eye at (even if a few die-hard prescriptivists still drag their feet over that one) and a world without

‘whom’ is pretty well-established. Emmy Favilla’s take on style and language in the twenty-first century is refreshingly aware of the fact that language is fluid and fast-changing in the age of the internet (or should that be the ‘Internet’?).

Language is alive and change is to be embraced, not feared. As copyeditor at BuzzFeed, Favilla found herself called upon to issue language guidelines that quickly morphed from a four-line intranet page to a full-blown style guide. She may not be a professional linguist, but she is fascinated with how usage and punctuation affect style and tone.

The book’s twelve chapters focus on various themes: writing about

sensitive topics, words and language trends to embrace, email etiquette, and

the internet’s effect on punctuation. The book’s aim is less to offer guidance on

familiar usage problems (although many of these do feature in the index) than

to focus on language difficulties in the age of social media, including the

evolution of ‘because’ from conjunction to preposition, the introduction of

gender-neutral pronouns (‘xe’ and ‘ze’) and the honorific ‘Mx’, the use of

shruggies, and expressions such as ‘nom’. Some of the contemporary language

featured in the book is probably ephemeral (Favilla herself admits doge-speak

is already on its way out and describes ‘lol’ as “an empty shell of an abbreviation” reduced to a pragmatic marker).

However, Favilla offers informative insights into contemporary language use and, unlike most of her usage-guide predecessors, she acknowledges that English is now a global language with regional differences. She also provocatively questions reference works such as Merriam-Webster and Strunk and White (a well-established US style guide), arguing that no reference work should be blindly followed. Screenshots of her tweets and emails to colleagues over correct usage further emphasise that any decision on style and usage is both individual and open to challenge.

So is this a revolutionary book? For Favilla, there is “no such thing as correct style”, and a “one-size-fit-all approach to language” is impossible. It is, she says, a book about feelings, not rules. Nevertheless, just like the more prescriptive guides, she justifies her preferences on the grounds of concision and clarity. Her decisions on style and usage are often more conservative than at first appears.

Overall this is a highly readable book, and - as one might expect from a book dealing with language in the BuzzFeed age - fast-paced, lively and humorous.

Linda Pillière is professor of English language at Aix Marseille Univ, LERMA,

Aix-en-Provence, France. She recently co-edited Standardising English: Norms

and Margins in the History of the English Language CUP.