I cannot support those who make the grave mistake of thinking that a way of talking which is spoiled and full of errors, which revels in the looseness of its words, or frolics with childish expressions, or swells up with bombast, or tosses around inane sayings, or adorns itself with blossoms that fall if lightly shaken, or treats outrageous things as sublime, or runs mad under the name of free speech, will be most pleasing to the crowds.
Quintillian, The Institute of Oratory 12.10.73
(My own translation)
September is upon us, and as students head back to school, one can hear everywhere the clucking of tongues about kids these days who don’t know how to talk proper any more and say all kinds of weird and outrageous things. Thus it has ever been, all the way back two thousand years to the first-century CE Roman orator Quintillian, and before.
The kids are fine, everybody. They always have been. They always will be.
YOLO.
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