Attitudes toward changes in a language range between two poles. The prescriptivist says words have fixed definitions, and using them in ways that aren’t in the dictionary is misuse. The descriptivist says that words mean whatever people choose them to mean. Few people take a pure position at one end or the other. Prescriptivists face the fact that dictionaries change. Descriptivists can’t treat every neologism they hear as part of the language if they expect people to understand each other. The debate is over how much legitimacy a word needs before it’s considered standard. Words pass through the stage of slang or jargon before they reach full citizenship. Some words don’t go beyond that status, and they don’t have to. Professions need their jargon and subcultures need their slang, and they don’t have to impose it on the whole linguistic community.

Linguistic change isn’t something that a mysterious Sprachgeist causes. It’s the product of the users’ choices. Prescriptivists exert a drag on changes, and that can be good. If the language changes too fast, it becomes less precise. No one’s sure whether a word means what it always meant or it’s become something else. New words are necessary to convey new concepts, but they should prove their worth before getting wide adoption. Some words, like “nice,” have changed so many times that no one’s sure what they mean, except by context and tone of voice.

Sometimes people try to shift a word’s meaning for their own purposes. They take a word with good connotations and attach it to another concept to boost its reputation, or they attach a despised word to something they want to attack. Sometimes their new definition becomes part of normal usage. This happens especially with politically loaded words. An honest writer faces a dilemma with these words. Do you use the word in the old sense or in the new one? Either way some people will misunderstand you, perhaps intentionally. Going along with the change can hand propagandists a cheap win.

There’s some value in an adage from software people working with file formats: Be forgiving when reading, strict when writing. Software writers try not to let minor deviations from the standard break their ability to read files, since they don’t want to frustrate the user. When writing files, they should stick closely to the standard — for exactly the same reason. By analogy, writers should lean to prescriptivism when writing and descriptivism when interpreting others’ writing. That gives you the best chance of understanding others and of being understood without misinterpretation. But if using a word in the old way becomes rare, there’s a point where you gain nothing by sticking with it. Words with clear, stable meanings are better for a broad audience than ones that are in flux.

The audience makes a difference. How will your readers understand a word you use? If half the population uses a word a certain way but you’re addressing the other half, you’d best avoid that usage. The purpose of writing is to communicate, and the words you choose should fit the audience you’re trying to reach.