atw: Re: Harumble for Geoffrey Pullum

... The style of a writer has nothing to do with the truth or otherwise of what the writer writes. A critique of the grammar recommendations in EoS was the primary subject matter of Pullum's review, and the style of Pullum's writing, whether in the review itself or in some other of his writings, is utterly irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of his critique. 

True, of course.
But, as it happens, Pullum writes appropriately. In his textbook, he writes technically while in his Chronicle article and his talks for the ABC he wrote for a more general audience. In fact, in his essay 'A guest of the State', in 'The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax ...', he sends up linguistic technical language. Given all this, the original argumentum ad hominem was foul play, but I wanted to offer an argumentum pro Pullo, which is, I hope, not fowl play.
(A joke for Latinists. I have a talon for this sort of thing, although I suppose some will call me a featherbrain.) 

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