About a month ago, my U-T colleague in columny, Logan Jenkins, spotlighted a PETA ad displayed in the San Diego International Airport. “Welcome to San Diego!” the message begins. Then, next to the smiling face of actress Kathy Najimy, the statement continues, “If you love animals, like I do, please avoid Sea World.”
Logan goes on to explore the politics of the PETA exhortation and to criticize its grammar: “Who edited the copy? Doesn’t anyone at the animal-rights group know that like is a preposition, not a conjunction? Winston tastes good as, not like, a cigarette should.”
I never miss reading a Logan Jenkins column, but I must respectfully disagree with his blanket condemnation of like as a conjunction.
From 1954 to 1972, magazines, billboards and the air waves were filled with a little jingle that twanged, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” English teachers and other word-watchers raised such a fuss about the use of like in the ditty that the publicity was worth millions to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. So they came back with a second campaign: “What do you want — good grammar or good taste?”
My answer to that question is that the employment of like in the Winston commercial is both good grammar (actually, good usage) andin good taste.
Among prescriptive grammarians the prevailing rule is that we may use like or as as a preposition joining a noun — “cleans like a white tornado,” “blind as a bat” — but we must not use like as a conjunction that introduces an adverb clause. Because “a cigarette should” is a subject-verb clause, the conjunction joining the two halves of the statement should be as, as in “Winston tastes good as a cigarette should” — and “If you love animals, as I do, please avoid Sea World.”
The poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson thundered, “It’s a modern vulgarism that I have seen grow up within the last 30 years; and when Prince Albert used it in my drawing room, I pulled him up for it, in the presence of the Queen, and told him he never ought to use it again.” When he was host of “The Morning Show,” Walter Cronkite, refused to speak the line as written, and an announcer was entrusted with declaiming the offending like.
Cheeky as it may appear, I respectfully take issue with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Walter Cronkite and Logan Jenkins. Open-minded, open-eared observers of the living English language notice that tens of everyday expressions use like as a subordinating conjunction joining a clause. Fill in the following blanks:
• He tells it _ it is.
• Nobody can do it _ McDonald’s can.
• She ate _ there was no tomorrow.
• If you knew Suzie _ I know Suzie …
• Winston tastes good _ a cigarette should.
I am confident that, despite the fact that each blank kicks off an adverb clause, most native and experienced English speakers would naturally employ like.
Please send your questions and comments about language to richard.lederer@utsandiego.com