Out damn(ed) spot? When is damn, not damned, the right choice?

A subscriber to this blog recently sent me an e-mail pointing out that I had misused "damn" in my story "The Fish" when I wrote, "I hate the damn fish." His argument was that since I used the word as an adjective, it should have been "damned".

While I agree with him that absolutely correct, traditional English usage calls for "damned", I disagree with him in this particular instance. Why? Because this is a case both of English being an evolving language and a writer (me) making a conscious choice in how to use a word for a certain effect.

There was recently a discussion of this topic on The Linguist List at www.linguist.org. I'll let the linguists speak for themselves in response to a question about the usage of damn vs. damned:

"The shift from "damned" to "damn" as an adjective or adverb is part of a larger loss of participial suffixes in English when the participle is used as an adjective or adverb. We no longer say "iced cream," "skimmed milk," etc., although we do still say "mashed potatoes." I've seen "mash potatoes" on diner menus, but not widely. This loss of the -d suffix is so common that it's even called "the 'ice cream' effect," and it's obviously applied to "damn." I should think that anyone who insisted on "damned" would also want to say and write "iced cream," just to be consistent. But these change processes are not completely consistent, and standards are, as my colleagues and your friends have pointed out, are determined by usage."*

So that's the argument for English being an evolving language. In other words, "damn" is becoming correct by simple virtue of the fact that that's the way people use the word.

Now, I tend to be a language purist. I practically sleep with the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style under my pillow at night. I like consistency above all things in English usage. Pick a rule and stick with it is my motto. Since there doesn't seem to be a "rule" that really works for the usage of "damn" vs. "damned" given the current state of its evolution, but I can't stand to give up on consistent usage, I've made up some rules of my own. They're what I use in my own writing, they're what I use when I'm editing, and you're more than welcome to steal them.

Kelli's completely arbitrary "damn" rules:

• In formal or nonfiction writing, include the "ed" when using "damned" as an adjective.
• In fiction writing, when used in narrative by a third-person narrator, include the "ed".
• In fiction writing, when used in narrative by a first-person narrator, leave out the "ed" and simply use "damn" because this is the way people actually speak.
• In dialogue, leave out the "ed". Again, this is because it reflects the way people actually speak.

Since I was following these rules when I wrote "The Fish", which is from the point of view of a first-person narrator, I used "damn". This is what my narrator would say, were she telling this story out loud, so I consider it correct usage.

If anyone has come up with a better solution to this "damn" problem, I'd love to hear it!