Like or As

 COVID-19 is not ever likely to be eradicated from the planet. It will become something that we can quite easily live with, like we do any number of other diseases. In the meantime, I am going to continue to live my life just as I was before I knew anything about Omicron.

In a recent column in the Globe and Mail, Gary Mason illustrates the language in transition. First, he uses “like” instead of “as” in front of the clause “we do”, but then he seems to have remembered what he learned at school, that “like” is a preposition to be followed only by a noun, while  the conjunction “as” should introduce a clause (“just as I was”).

We see this construction almost daily in the Globe. Just this morning for example, 

If maple spirit stops flowing like it did in the springs of my youth, what will Canada become?

I winced, just as I winced fifty years ago when sports celebrities with less education than I (but twenty times the income) would say in every interview, “Like I said...” Now, the error is everywhere, and I suspect the style guides are saying it is acceptable. But it still grates on my ear.

Like other grammarians, I will continue to use “as” in front of a clause, as I did in the past, and “like” in front of a noun.

“Like I said” — how the words grate on my ears,

Like stone on the glass or like chalk on the board,

And I will use “as” in my declining years,

As I learned at school, as the text book implored.

But when I am gone, and "like I said" becomes the idiom,

It will be deemed correct by the grammatical praesidium.

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