Latest languistic lapses

Chambers (2003) says that Hoggart's use of presently as a synonym for now  is "obs or Scot and N Am", and used thus it seems more logical  than the current English-English sense of bye-and-bye, when I get round to it, when I'm good and ready.

Compare momentarily: in the UK, "for a moment", but in the US, "in a moment".  I have more than once been momentarily alarmed when the public address system on an American plane announced that "the flight will take off momentarily".

Brian writes:  I don't think that logic is a useful guide to acceptable usage, fortunately or otherwise!  I like your definitions of the current sense, except that I can't find any authority for 'bye-and-bye' unless in cricket parlance.  (Plenty for by-and-by, of course, including the OED Online.) 

The American Heritage dictionary says about that:

An original meaning of presently was " at the present time; currently. " That sense is said to have disappeared from the literary language in the 17th century, but it has survived in popular usage and is widely found nowadays in literate speech and writing. Still, there is a lingering prejudice against this use. In the most recent survey the sentence General Walters is . . . presently the United States Ambassador to the United Nations was acceptable to exactly 50 percent of the Usage Panel.

Thus it appears to be a matter in some flux right now — at least at the AHD Usage Panel.

Brian writes:  I thought there'd be an argument about 'presently' — see the three preceding comments also. It's a good example of a fine and useful word meaning something subtly different from 'soon', but very close to it, gradually becoming unavailable because 'presently' sounds to some ears as if it must mean the same as 'at present', as of course it did at one time long ago.  The sadness is that this corruption of a useful word is unnecessary, because it's coming to replace or duplicate the perfectly good words 'currently' and 'now', or 'at present'.  As so often, the process is considerably further advanced in the US than in 'English English', where in my fairly confident opinion it remains unacceptable in the sense of 'currently', although I have no doubt that it will gradually achieve respectability, and its current sense ('fairly soon, but don't be impatient') will simultaneously begin to sound archaic and thus be lost. For the time being, though, when used to mean 'at present' it has an unmistakeable American twang.  

The above was written before I checked with the OED and Burchfield's Fowler, the latter also cited above by Michael Hornsby to, admittedly, good effect:

OED Online:

presently
b. In a little while, before long, soon.
  Now the usual sense.

 3. a. At the present time; at this time, at present, now.
  Apparently avoided in literary use between the 17th and 20th centuries, but in regular use in most English dialects and by Scottish writers; revived in the 20th cent. in the U.S., subsequently in Britain and elsewhere. Regarded by some usage writers, esp. after the mid 20th cent., as erroneous or ambiguous.

Burchfield's Fowler's Modern English Usage:

The oldest sense (15C.) of those still current is 'at the present time, now': it is now chiefly used in America and Scotland….  it became weakened at an early date (by the 17C.) from 'immediately' to 'in a little while, soon' [which is] not quite as old, but is now the main current sense in England and elsewhere.

 As so often, where America leads, the rest of the world follows, sometimes reaping great benefit, sometimes not.

The support of the Guardian and Economist Style Guides for the view that presently should be used only to mean "soon" and  not "at present/now" is encouraging for those of us, like you and me, who share that view. But it doesn't, alas, allow us to conclude  that "prescriptively, presently in the sense of "currently" is not (yet) acceptable in UK English", much as we might wish it so. It merely establishes that this usage is not acceptable in the Guardian and the Economist – as Master Hoggart, of all people, should have known. His real offence was to have violated his own newspaper's style rules. Style guides are primarily intended (evidently not always successfully)  to ensure consistency of usage in the publication concerned.  To that end, they aim, of course, to prevent obvious grammatical howlers and offences against linguistic logic- of the kind well illustrated in your other examples – from getting into print. But in many cases they merely express a strong stylistic preference for one among several current usages and insist on its use by their own writers. As a matter of interest, The Times Style Guide decrees that  present should always be preferred to current  in the sense of "now, at this time". For many years it also banned "despite", insisting instead on "in spite of" (though this injunction has now sensibly been dropped). I can think of no good reason for either "rule" other than the personal preference of successive editors. What is demonstrable fact is that a large number of well-educated people in this country think that the use of presently to mean "now, at present" is entirely acceptable, and that a possibly even larger number (though I am not aware of the results of any census on the point) think it is not, and are supported in this view, as the passage you cite from the OED carefully puts it, "by some usage writers". That is about all that can be usefully said on the matter. The OED entry, incidentally, offers scant evidence for your curious notion that lesser dictionaries are merely "descriptive" and that, by implication, superior dictionaries such as the OED are "prescriptive" – that is, they lay down the law. I see nothing in the OED entry which says the use of  presently to mean "at present" is definitively wrong, though the inference might be drawn that this is a use best avoided because of disagreement over its acceptability and the consequent risk of ambiguity. In fact, all the best dictionaries, from the OED down, are predominantly descriptive: that is, they mainly describe the way words are used, and the meanings attached to them, by literate people at the point in time when the dictionary goes to press. The more comprehensive ones also give some account of etymology, show how usage and meanings have changed over time, identify those that are obsolete and those that are current, cite regional variants, flag up areas of dispute (as in the case of presently) and give some space to slang and colloquial usage. They are prescriptive, if at all, mainly by omission – that is, those usages and meanings of which they make no mention can be assumed to be ones found to have no currency of any significant kind. Prescription is mainly a matter for manuals of grammer – and newspaper style guides. There is more room for both prescription and description in general guides to usage, by such well-qualified authorities as Fowler and Burchfield, but the exact balance struck, I suggest,  still reflects personal preference and temperament to a large extent. I would locate Fowler pretty clearly towards the prescriptive end of the spectrum, while Burchfield is much closer to the descriptive end.

Brian writes:  I don't disagree with anything here, Michael.  My reference to 'lesser dictionaries' tending to be purely descriptive simply reflected the fact that the smaller the dictionary, the less space it has for the kind of comments about acceptability or controversy surrounding a particular entry or usage that are common in, e.g., the full OED.  Of course a dictionary, any dictionary, is bound to be mainly descriptive: that's its job.  But a big enough dictionary should have room for warnings about questionable usages.  It would go beyond the limitations of a dictionary to say that a particular usage of 'presently' is 'definitively wrong' when the usage is not all that uncommon even in England, and increasingly so in the US and Scotland.  But there's no mistaking the OED's view, surely.

I agree that Bob Burchfield tended more to the descriptive than the prescriptive, mainly I think because of the many years he had spent as editor of the great supplement to the OED before taking on the equally gigantic task of producing a new edition of Fowler.  I was lucky enough to know him quite well and sometimes ventured to reproach him, I hope respectfully, for undue generosity towards those guilty of linguistic error or lapses in taste.  But he was a very kind man, like many New Zealanders.