The pressure on language to deteriorate does not come merely from below, from the "democratic" lev-elers. It comes also from above, from the fancy jar-gonmongers, idle game players, fashionable coteries for second-rate intellectuals.

The literary sensibility is geared to the timeless, that is, to the now only as an avenue by which all time can be reached.

Half the population (I guess) thinks that any plural ending in s requires an apostrophe, and the other half stands idly by without squirming, if, in fact, it even notices.