David Owen's sentence:
> Assigning dates to transitions in grammar and usage is difficult.

Reminded me of Neil Postman's #AmusingOurselvesToDeath_ Maybe we started becoming morons about, er... inattentive or not-thinking toward, our wriiting from the 1890s?

#NeilPostman:
> As late as #1890, #advertising, still understood to consist of words, was regarded as an essentially serious and rational enterprise whose purpose was to convey information and make claims in propositional form.