Miss Thistlebottom teaches English. She tells her students how to write. Miss Thistlebottom knows there are rules and rules must not be broken. Sticks may be broken, preferably upon a recalcitrant child's rump or hand, but rules are sacrosanct.
Miss Thistlebottom's hobgoblins are the children of hairy little men and women. They break rules, often just to be rude. They are disruptive and should never have been allowed in school. If they cannot be sent home they must be ignored or punished.
Exemplary children, of whom there appear to be fewer and fewer, are those who are attentive, malleable, and follow the rules without question. Miss Thistlebottom occasionally praises them, and was convinced they would inherit the earth. She is no longer sure of that — especially since her encounters and exchange of letters with one Theodore M. Bernstein, who had the termerity to include her letters in a book he called, without her permission, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971).
Theodore Bernstein was the editorial director of the New York Times Book Division, taught journalism at Columbia’s School of Journalism for 25 years and served as a consultant on usage for the Random House and American Heritage dictionaries. He invented the archytypal Miss Bertha Thistlebottom not to debunk the rules of English grammar and usage, but to relieve of fear and frustration those who choose now and then to make exception to the rules.
That was in 1971, when the rules and 8th grade teachers like Miss Thistlebottom were more likely to be found and therefore in need of remedy. Forty years later the reverse is more likely.
Writers familiar with rules of style and usage are less common. Fewer people have a well thumbed Chicago or New York Times manual or even a good dictionary. Smart phones go hand in hand with dull people. Letter writing is outmoded, historians pull their hair, email is brief or it is unread. Humbug and publicity are rife, masquerading as communication. We've even forgotten to shut up and listen. We talk to each other more frequently than with each other.
I know, I'm beginning to sound like Miss Thistlebottom. Maybe her day has come round again.
For those who seek a middle way, try the lively New York Times blog called "After Deadline": "The latest subjective sampling of sparkling prose from recent pages. Read ’em and weep, or laugh, or cheer." Or read Harper's Magazine's Weekly Review. That's where I plucked the image of a humbug.