Not coincidentally, the language of Judaism is primarily prescriptive rather than descriptive; even its written prescriptions are "largely incomprehensible without unwritten commentaries … transmitted by oral instruction".
So it would be wrong to be prescriptive to any individual writer about what they are writing.
While I am fascinated by the linguistic exuberance of the vox populi, I'd be the first to argue that having prescriptive rules is desirable, indeed indispensable, in many arenas of writing.
As Kellogg School of Management professor Brayden King puts it, corporations are now writing their ethics statements in a more "descriptive, rather than prescriptive" manner to entice future employees.
In 1862, when prescriptive grammar ruled, Thoreau wrote: "When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly … I think – Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it".
When I applied the idea to poetry I saw how prescriptive we can be – particularly as readers – in our assumptions about the influence of gender on writing.
This statement, like many others he made, reveals Greenberg's propensity to write in a prescriptive rather than merely descriptive way; such strong opinions found their way into the informal studio advice he gave to artists whose work he favoured.
An individualised summary report of the data was written following structured prescriptive guidelines by the first author (registered psychologist), or the second author under the supervision of the first author.
An individualised summary report of the data was written following structured prescriptive guidelines by the first author (registered psychologist), or the second author under the supervision of the first author and consisted of mood, stress and coping, maintaining wellbeing and useful resources and recommendations for the intervention group.
I try to avoid being and sounding prescriptive in my writing, but in this case I am begging women to put the fake orgasm out of business.
"Standards of usage are desirable in many arenas of communication," he writes, and yet "many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons".
