In case you've been wondering, yes, David Foster Wallace really is a pretentious . . . twerp. Scroll down for Languagehat's critique of Wallace's well-known Harper's piece demanding a return to prescriptive English, "Tense Present: Democrat, English, and the Wars over Usage."

Both these guys know so much about language, though, that I'm cringing at the comma and hyphenation mistakes I likely made in that last paragraph. And is is Foster Wallace or Wallace? After a short fact-checking mission: I'm reasonably sure it's Wallace.