A Pedant's Progress

 Commentary magazine: Joseph Epstein confesses to being a pedant. An excerpt:

Daily life generally offers this pedant a good workout. He calls his local library, and a robo-voice informs him that it “is now presently open.” Surely you mean “currently open,” he mutters into the phone. The play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs says that “there’s two outs,” and the pedant mentally retorts, “There ‘are’ two outs, Schmuckowitz.” At the supermarket he gets in the express line, where he is greeted by a sign that reads, “Ten Items or Less,” and thinks, whatever happened to the more correct word “fewer?”