@Setanta,
Quote:There aren't general rules, especially in English. That's just the way languages work. Any such "rules" are usually just customary usage. Customs change, and poets or bad writers come along and change everything.
Forgive me but that is simply an absurd notion. The rules of English are described in many weighty tomes. If there were no rules you wouldn't be able to converse nor would you be able to write what you write.
Nor would you, and this is the salient point, be able to deploy nuances that we all deploy many times daily without the slightest conception of why we did so.
A writer, attempting to defend a cockamamie rule, said, "It’s always a dangerous thing when politicians get near the English language:".
Certainly not just politicians.