My mother and I have become fairly close over the past few months; and since I admire her intelligence and keen eye for detail, I often get her to proof-read my work.
As she was sitting next to me, reviewing content for a marketing project of mine... she said, with great concern, that I used the word "creative" as a noun. Obviously, I know that this is not the traditional use. But I thought that at this point, it has come around as a quirky synonym for an innovator. With great confidence, my mother explained to me that it is solely an adjective and nothing more. Feeling like an idiot, I thought to myself "Where in along in my education and profession did I develop this concept of 'creative' being a noun?" As somewhat of an obsessive researcher, I did a quick Google search... and quite a few blog post and article appeared.
I had a field day looking at results. Unexpectedly, the Google search was very common as it automatically popped up before I could finish my search phrase (phew... I'm not alone). Opinions on what part of speech this word is varied quite a bit. For the most part, there was a dichotomy. Bloggers and article writers alike were pretty hyped up and persistent about their opinion on the debate, and bring a fellow grammar-phile I can completely relate. As you could probably guess, these people were claiming that "creative" can be used as a noun. This is a given since writers are considered creatives themselves. While more technical websites like Wikipedia (that I categorize as technical with great hesitation) and Merriam-Webster stuck with the adjective only stance.
Backtracking a little, I want to strongly iterate that this is not meant to discredit my mother's English skills in any way. Obviously, I greatly respect her opinion and education or else I wouldn't be writing this blog post in the first place. I could not undermine her even if I tried since she is the matriarch that I strive to be.
But where did I go wrong, or right, with this whole "creative" being a noun thing?
Ah, I remember! It was the simmer of 2012, wh ich also confirmed my lingering decision of making a u-turn and switching my major for Political Science to Visual Communications. I was a web design intern for a wonderful firm calling Gallinghouse Marketing + Creative.
CREATIVE. It's being used as a noun. Marketing is quite obviously a noun; and rules of grammar state that when using conjunctions, each connecting word must be of the same part of speech or of the same clause. But a single marketing firm cannot make the rules of grammar, and it certainly cannot change them.
Ugh... these ~45 seconds of thought felt like 2 hours. However, my unsettled mind needed to get to the bottom of the deliberation.
At this point, my only explanation was oral tradition. So I'm thinking... one day, one creative go together with a group of fellow creatives and they were like "Hey, you're a videographer, and I'm a designer, and you're a photographer, and we are all creatives. So creative should be a noun." And then they told some people. And then those people told other people. And so one and so forth. And there you have it; it was that simple. Creative became a noun.
But I still don't have the evidence that is quenching my thirst for a solid answer.
Okay, back to Google I go... typing in "slang words now in the dictionary." My Lord. Articles displaying images of the likes of Miley Cyrus appear. "Twerk" and "selfie" are in the Oxford Dictionary, and so are "derp" and "phablet" (what does that even... never mind). I mean, the amount of words that I type a day, and even in this very post, with the red zig-zaggy underlines indicating spelling errors is outrageous; however, those very words make sense. It's like the saying goes: "The rules are that there are no rules."
Then, I typed in "creative" in the Oxford Dictionary, sense this seemed to be a more progressive source, if you will.
Noun: A person whose job involves creative work
This Oxford search would have saved me a ton of time, but I would not have had nearly as much fun. It is still a little mind-boggling to me that two well renowned dictionaries (Oxford and Merriam-Webster) differentiate on which part of speech a very common word is.
Regardless, I learned a few lessons here...
Time is valuable; while this "discovery" of creative being a noun lasted a mere three minutes and it may seem pointless to some, it answered a lot of questions for me. I produce various multimedia visuals, and I write marketing materials on an assortment of platforms... so a label for my expertise can be limiting. But creativity is far from that.
The world is becoming more and more progressive. Advice from those that are more old and wise is absolutely imperative. However, questioning regulations (with a grain of salt, of course) can change the rules of future generations... and for the better. Thus, I must also take into consideration the opinions of those younger than me.
Conclusively, this is my first public website. I have been debating on the domain and title of what could be, one day, a successful brand. The first part of the title (tbyo) represents my name, and the second part is the noun that represents my restless, problem-solving personality. Creative. And let it be known that I am using it as a noun (I truly hope that you have used your context clues to figure that out at this point).
I ended up keeping the word "creative" as a noun in the particular piece that I discussed much earlier in the post... and it accomplished exactly what I wanted it to.
Thinking about it more and more, I believe that everyone is a creative in their own right; and I am excited to pin-point what we all have in common in that regard, because we all create our own future and destiny... and that is a very exciting thing.
Cheers, and keep creating!
Taylor