Not long ago, a columnist of a local paper devoted his entire column to challenging the grammatical correctness of  “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” I was surprised that a writer truly interested in language should still be trying to retrieve that chestnut from the fires of usage.

            But it had been a “pet hate phrase (for him) for some time.” It “bugs” him, he said, “not just because the slogan is ungrammatical” but “because it reflects a cynical and calculated abuse of the language.”

            Historically, “like” has been used as a conjunction (as in the Winston ad) by Keats, Shakespeare, Dryden, Burns, Coleridge, Shelley, Darwin, Bronte, Kipling, Shaw, Wells, Masefield, and Maugham, as well as the 11 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. So it is not ungrammatical.

            Those who damn the use of ”Like” as a conjunction began with the 19^th century literary gentlemen whose education had been chiefly Greek and Latin, who were bent on forcing English into the Procrustean Bed of classical languages. There is no reason why we should force English to conform to the rules of Latin; there is nothing inherent in the English or American language that requires that one use “as” rather than “like” in the Winston Ad! Objections to the ad come from purists, from those who are plagued by that vague “correctness demon” that hovers over their shoulders whenever they speak or write.

            Let us remember that a primary use of language is to affect people. Winston’s use of “like” instead of “as” (let us assume they were aware of the historical validity of its use) was to arouse. Obviously, they have succeeded. If the ad men used “like” as a “calculated abuse of the language,” they were playing the language game well. It was a stroke of genius, was it not, to foresee that such use would bring on so much free publicity and attention to their product. That is, after all, the purpose of advertising.

            The problems concerning correct usage arise for many reasons. Probably the most significant is that we don’t make a necessary distinction between speech and writing. The first is composed unconsciously on the spot; the second should be composed consciously and selectively. The standards for the second should not be imposed upon the first.

            Every day we hear people using ‘less’ where we might prefer they use ‘fewer,’ but I doubt that we would see it in writing. Serious writers still appreciate the nice distinction that ‘less’ describes size, value, or importance, and ‘fewer’ describes countable items.

            In our search for correctness, we should listen to those whose language we admire and use their speech as models. Language changes and, believe it or not, those changes which become permanent are usually for the better. Many fads will come and go just as in other patterns of behavior. And if a particular usage catches on – well, there’s very little we can do about it.

                        Bill Reynolds