It’s getting harder to make a living as an editor of the printed word, what with newspapers and other publications cutting staff. And it will be harder still now that Jack Lynch has published “The Lexicographer’s Dilemma,” an entertaining tour of the English language in which he shows that many of the rules that editors and other grammatical zealots wave about like cudgels are arbitrary and destined to be swept aside as words and usage evolve.

Also, despite what some fussbudget may have told you, civilization will not end when this happens.

Mr. Lynch, a professor of English at Rutgers University, subtitles his book “The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, From Shakespeare to ‘South Park,’ ” and those quotation marks around “proper” are telling. He takes us back to a time, half a millennium ago, when the very concept that there was a right and a wrong way to speak and spell things did not exist. Those edible things that come out of chickens were “egges” in the northern part of England and “eyren” in the southern. “Eggs” were still years in the future.

Not until the 17th century did people begin thinking that the language needed to be codified, and the details of who would do that and how have yet to be resolved. Should it be accomplished through a government-sponsored academy, an officially sanctioned dictionary, or what? These and other means were attempted, but meanwhile ordinary folks, dang them, kept right on talking and writing however they wanted, inventing words, using contractions and so on.

Odd quests against specific words and uses were cropping up even in the 1600s, and they reveal the modern-day grammar warriors who campaign against, say, “finalize” to be tomorrow’s ridiculous footnote. Jonathan Swift, for instance, had a thing about the word mob, a truncation of the Latin “mobile vulgus” (fickle crowd). Who knows how many other masterpieces he might have written had he not wasted all that energy fighting a battle that didn’t need fighting.