And another thing ...

From my beloved Chicago Manual of Style:

"Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most wide-spread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with 'but' or 'and.' As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves."⁷

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7. Charles Allen Lloyd, We Who Speak English: And Our Ignorance of Our Mother Tongue (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1938), 19.

And here's another one:

a; an. Use the indefinite article a before any word beginning with a consonant sound {a utopian dream}. Use an before any word beginning with a vowel sound {an officer} {an honorary degree}. The word historical and its variations cause missteps, but since the h in these words is pronounced, it takes an a {an hourlong talk at a historical society}. Likewise, an initialism (whose letters are sounded out individually) may be paired with one article, while an acronym (which is pronounced as a word) beginning with the same letter is paired with the other {an HTML document describing a HUD program}. See 5.73.

That's right, folks, it's "a history" not "an history"!

It occurs to me that there is a connection between deliberately awkward English usage prescriptions and, e.g., recycling paper: neither makes any sense from the perspective of the supposed goals -- clear and consistent communication on the one hand and efficient, environmentally friendly use of scarce resources on the other -- but they both appeal to that religious instinct to create an elite minority who feel good about the extra efforts they make while looking down on those who don't make the same sacrifices.