"To Be or Not To Be..."

Grammar Back in the day a friend gifted me a copy of Kingsley Amis's The King's English, the notable polemic on good writing. Unfortunately it jutted against my rather more freewheeling approach to the language. I'm not at pernickety as I probably should be. Plus writing tends to be instinctual, I think, and in any case the style I'm writing with now, even within this sentence, is purposefully conversational, and does not, I hope, reflect an inability to write.

David Marsh, amongst other things the keep of The Guardian's style guide, today posted a much shorter list of rules which understand that language and the use of language changes and in order for that to happen, the rulebook must often be thrown out or treated with some flexibility. Example:

"Try to has traditionally been regarded as more "correct" and try and as a colloquialism or worse. The former is certainly more formal, and far more common in writing, but it's the other way round when it comes to speech. Those who regard try and as an "Americanism" will be disappointed to learn that it is much more widely used in the UK than in the US. Sometimes there is a good case for try and – for example, if you want to avoid repeating the word to in a sentence such as: "We're really going to try and win this one."

Or as a wise man once said, "No! Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try."