The everyday every day

Moose Allain, the cartoonist, tweeted about the word everyday and the phrase every day, noting that the distinction between them is probably being lost:

As you know I’m against pedantry (because it’s usually wrong) and welcome the way our language changes. I don’t suppose it matters, so long as both meanings exist, if the spellings are interchangeable. However, I do think the local authority should get it right.

— Moose Allain Ꙭ (@MooseAllain) January 27, 2020

Maybe so, and if it is, we'll all get used to it and it'll be fine. In case you already don't have this distinction, everyday means 'ordinary', as in Just your everyday clothes will be fine for the event, while every day means more or less the same as each day: Parking charges apply every day. Just another bit of the internet sad about an ongoing language change, then.

I was intrigued by his follow-up tweet, which noted that pedantry is usually wrong, and this minor spelling change doesn't matter because we'll still have both possible meanings. Which is true. But he also thinks that the local authority should get it right.

On the face of it, it's totally logical. It may well be a change in progress, but while there is still a 'correct' option, official bodies should get it right, because official writing should follow formal conventions. I would tend to agree, in fact. But there is clearly a contradiction here. If it doesn't matter, then the local authority shouldn't have to get it right, no matter who they are. And if it is a change that's happening anyway, then at some point it won't be a mistake, and that line isn't a date when something is incorrect the day before but correct the day after. It's just the time when people can look back on 'the past' and note that we did things differently then.