What do you mean?

The idea of continual change is something the average dental professional will be entirely comfortable with. When registering with the General Dental Council you agree to do a set number of hours continual professional development, to make sure you are kept in touch with the advances taking place and the dentistry offered to your patients is as future-proof as possible.

As a history buff now working as an editor I prefer things to be a little more static. The Battle of Hastings was 1066, the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, and in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. These facts don’t change, once it is known it is known. Simple! It may be understandable then that when it comes to language I prefer the rules to be set and am slightly nervous about the development of words. I dislike the fact that ‘innit’ has made it to the dictionary. I’m still only just coming to terms with ‘ginormous’ which seems suspiciously like a mistake when writing ‘gigantic’ or ‘enormous’. At least the meanings of these words are clear though, other words have developed such that their meaning has been lost entirely. ‘Enormity’ is not just about size, ‘fantastic’ is not just a way of saying ‘good’ and don’t even get me started on the misuse of ‘literally’!