For what it's worth, the American Heritage Dictionary gives the following usage note for 'myriad':
Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Myriad myriads of lives.” This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mrias was used only in poetry.
[Sorry about the missing vowels in the Greek - they are u+macron in the original]

I am in sympathy with Liz's general thrust, but, as this example makes clear, arguments about specific points of English usage and grammar should be made with care, and relevant evidence has to be examined.

For another very nice example see http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003414.html
where Mark Liberman tests the advice that the passive voice is best avoided (whoops!) by looking at the actual practice of an acknowledged master of English prose, Winston Churchill.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt

Don't know whether to dissent or agree, however it does demonstrate how our language is evolving. Look back 200years and you may not understand much of what was written. Now the form of grammar, pronunciation and expletives is vastly different.

I used to write long grammatical lectures and essays, now I find myself rewriting then until they,
A. Fit into 350 words. B. those reading it have sufficient understanding of English language to understand what I write. C. Get my message across in the best way by using less colourful explicit language.

This may have something to do firstly with movies, then TV, video and now the internet. Now we see the colour of a story in front of us, not so much within words. People today use words to describe a happening, not the happening itself, we have moving pictures for that. Trying to work out what someone is saying when they get the spelling, context and meaning of the word wrong, is growing in our printed media. The internet and SMS texting, chat room language, is a prime example of the rapid changes in our language.

Language is no longer isolated demographically or culturally and English is becoming the norm for the world. Along with that, a new universal English is becoming prominent. It may not be long before we have a language people from 100 years ago would not understand, but the entire world will.

Are the pedant, just trying to hang onto the past, or just survive a lovely, colourful, yet outdated way of expressing. As long as the written un-pictured word is about, I hope we keep such a beautifully expressive written language and enjoy it.

PS, I did fail English at school, could never get the explanations right. Now I understand, it's all changing, back to the drawibng board, bugger.

I think that the decline in standards of the teaching in English has worsed the effect of both the English of buisness and political correctness.

It pains me greatly that studying English at school and studying everything apart from Latin and Logic at university that the standard of English is so poor. There are terrible phrases such as "life journey" (life), "life partner" (husband/wife), "truth value" (truthfulness?), all of which owe something to the English of buisness. I suppose that one could hyphenate such words, but the hyphen just eliminates a preposition. The problem, thus, with hyphenation is that one often doesn't know which preposition is being replaced. These terms abound in the New South Welsh HSC, where these compound nouns with little significance are used as 'concepts' through which great works of literature are bastardised.

Political correctness is also allowed to reign when you mix your roots. "Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it - CP Scott." Similarly, destroying our lovely Anglo-Saxon words like alderman, chairman, spokesman, fireman, craftsmanship, for the sake of political correctness is permitted when adding latin suffixes to Anglo-Saxon nounds, such as chairperson, spokesperson, and (I heard this one last week from a mate doing Architecture) 'craftspersonship'. Surely, if we seek equality for women, and we seek them to be valued because they are women who can reach great heights, we should make sure that words such as chairwoman (a word older than 300 years) and spokeswoman can be used without a cringe. Of course, we must still defer to the masculine when there is doubt, but with only a week's teaching at year 7 level, we could easily explain why this is a necessity to students.

My concern with the removal of all the female ending -ess from words ending in -or and -er is that it implies that women have to become like men in order to gain equality. Rather, our society should focus on increasing the respect given to the -ess ending, rather than force women into being respect for denying something of their femininity. The effect, however, is greater in it makes the next generation feel like they have a right to change completely the rules of the language to suit their own wants, rather than acknowledging that it represents an objective standard of good parlance which we should preserve for generations to come.

I suppose studying Ancient Greek at high school has made me a pedant. I want to know why I can't say platypodes for the plural of platypus. We don't call doctors who work with feet "Pusesiatrists" or "Piiatrists", so why should our flat-footed monotremes be called platypodes?

Thanks Liz for a fascinating discussion.

The biggest language struggle for me is to “mitigate” (or is that militate?) against the inaccurate use of the word “mitigate” (or is that militate?)

While I agree that well-written English is a joy to read, I hesitate to join the bandwagon pronouncing the “decline of English” etc.

Throughout most of the 19th century, illiteracy was near-universal. Whatever writing remains to us from that period was written by a tiny proportion of the populace, from a narrowly-representative cross-section of their population.

As recently as the 1940s, the majority of Australian adults didn’t receive much education beyond elementary level, and the majority grew up under circumstances that modern classifications would describe as “functionally illiterate”. And again, whatever writing remains to us from the mid-20th century was written by a small proportion of the population, from a narrowly-representative cross-section of that population.

And as recently as 1970, 70% of Australians didn’t stay in school after Year 10. So most of the highly-credentialed managerial positions at that time were filled by people from, once again, a small and relatively privileged section of the populace - and the writing they produced is reflective of the rarefied circumstances in which many were educated.

Now, literacy of one standard or another, is near-universal. With more people writing more than ever before, from a wider diversity of backgrounds than ever before, how surprised or alarmed should we feel that there is a sharp divergence between the written language now and the written language then?

As for poor communication, I can find you any number of inconsistently-spelt, ambiguously-constructed, grammatically-questionable, poorly-written missives and memos from any century you care to mention. What does this prove, exactly?

Exhibit A: Doctors' writing. If this has declined, how could you tell?