Linguistic prejudice in editing copy for publication

This is fascinating. Okay some of it is about housestyle and some of it is about readability, but some of it is sheer linguistic prejudice where recognition of a certain diversity in dialect or register should be given. Check out The Most Common Edits and note that while there are three or four fair-enough comments, there are also two or three well-dodgy ones.

In fact it's faintly amusing that the way this one is introduced actually needed editing by me and I'm still not sure it makes sense (phrase containing word 'petard' comes to mind).

the writer putsneither or not only before a verb, and then fails to supply a verb for the matching nor orbut also: “The investigation could neither account for the missing cupcakes nor for the fact that there was a secret door in the back of the manager’s office.” Some readers can skim right past a sentence like that; others will shudder

In fact, not only do I skim past it, I can't even see what the issue is. I think I'm a pretty good user of English, I therefore think that this level of pernickety-ness is OTT: the shudderers should get a life and learn that a vast swathe of English-speakers, natives at that, don't speak/write their variety and don't see why they should have to learn to. Give a little, guys.

Then there is this little gem:

pronouns sometimes fail to match the referent and its verb, especially when a collective noun is involved: “The restaurant continues to advertise their cupcakes.”

This is not a failure to match referent and verb: it's a variety of English usage whereby a third person singular following a gender-indefinite antecedent  may use 'their' or 'they'. It's perfectly respectable: Shakespeare and Jane Austen did it, it was only Victorian grammar Nazis who disallowed it on spurious pseudo-logical grounds.

People who edit: it's about time you recognised that you are ill served by some of this grammer Nazi prejudice: lighten up.
People who suck their teeth when someone uses, for example, 'their' for an indefinite though singular antecedant (sic): other people have to learn to recognise and put up with your English usage when it differs from theirs: do the decent thing and reciprocate.
People who write: by all means learn to shorten sentences, keep phrasing closer together and recognise that punctuation is to help your readers compensate for the lack of intonation and body language. But you are entitled to your own variety of English and to challenge the prejudices of those who claim they don't like any variety but their own. They need to loosen up; why should putting up with different varieties be a one way traffic in their favour.