ndrosen

Back when I was graduate student in the 1990s, I had a few problems with a grammar and usage checking program. When I used the word “wife,” it advised me to use something more egalitarian, like “partner.” When I used the word “interface,” the program warned me that this was a jargon word, which it sometimes is, true, but I was writing a scientific paper involving the interface between a silicon substrate and an aluminum film.

The other day, an article in Reason online had a link to an article in National Review about Grammarly correcting people’s usage to be politically correct, and in particular, raising objections to the use of such words as husband and wife.

I pictured Grammarly fulminating against the use of “wife” when someone had occasion to refer to Roberta Kaplan’s wife Rachel, or Elena della Donne’s wife Amanda. Could failure to use the word “wife” in such a case be considered evidence of refusal to accept same-sex marriage, and therefore a microaggression, or a not so micro aggression? Would a college student get in trouble for his (and Grammarly’s) word usage? Would people demand that the staff at Grammarly duly grovel? Those who live by imposing the current version of bien pensant language may yet die by it.