The Politics of Prescriptivism: One Style Manual, One Century

Abstract

This article analyzes the changing prescriptive aims of the New York Times style guides from 1923-2015. While the editors of the style guides are not always explicit about the political pressures that result in changes from one edition to the next, the development of the entries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries demonstrates the power of standard language ideology at work. By tracing the changing prescriptions over the decades, this study highlights the complicated but important nature of the politics of prescriptivism.