The 1986 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook from my first year on the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun remains on my shelves as an historical artifact.* As I opened it the other day, my eye fell on the gauntlet/gantlet entry.
A gauntlet is a glove, figuratively thrown down or taken up in a challenge. A gantlet is a flogging ordeal, in which the victim runs between two lines of men with clubs who beat him as he passes. It's possible that unless you are of my vintage you were blissfully aware of such a distinction. But some of us enforced it for decades.
It is a waste of time.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage pointed out thirty years ago that the two words are merely spelling variants. Bryan A. Garner, who upheld the distinction in 2009, writes in 2022 that "run the gauntlet outdistances run the gantlet by a 16-to-1 margin and has consistently done so since about 1800. The usage 'battle' was lost before it began." (The AP Stylebook retains the distinction, one more barnacle on the hull.)
The whole life of editing lies in upholding useful distinctions of meaning and usage. But our teachers, editors, and manuals have a regrettable tendency to accumulate spurious distinctions and shibboleths.** Part of our responsibility as writers and editors is to sort out faulty instruction and determine how the language is actually used, for clarity and the reader's sake.
So I put it to you today that distinctions you used to uphold as writers and editors you have subsequently abandoned as you learned better. Will you share them? Be clear: This is not an invitation to proclaim the hill you will die on. It may be the hill on which you uphold the masculine default or the one on which literally has no figurative sense, BUT I DON'T CARE.
You used to make some change that you thought at the time was meaningful but which you now realize is a time-waster. So fess up in a comment here, and sin no more.
* Yes, "an" historical, dammit.
** I published a little book, Bad Advice, on some of the rubbish we've all been taught.
Slightly different subject, but it brought to mind the time my English teacher changed marital to martial in a essay about something marital. I was 17, a freshman in college. I'm 81 now and still mad about it.
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