50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497/

by gnosis • 17 years ago

82 71 17 years ago

diN0bot• 17 years ago

what i've always wondered is how to handle apostrophes, parentheses and punctuation. it's not what is Right, it's what will look right to the audience.

i love "hello world." ??

i love programs (especially hello world). ??

RevRal3• 17 years ago

If you're serious, which is likely since the internet is worldwide, I have some advice that can help you get started. Also, I'm going to believe that your lack of capitals is a conscious choice. A method of saving time... over time.

Besides apostrophes, commas, and question marks, I have always considered special punctuation as a kind of cheat. If you're using special punctuation, there is almost always a more eloquent way of articulating your sentence/thought.

One exercise I have employed, when organizing my writing, has been to write without punctuation and in lines, every thought on a new line. Like a poem. Punctuation is essentially there to separate these thoughts, so you can start by adding the periods, then arranging your thoughts into a paragraph.

Use of special punctuation, in my opinion, is mostly a means of controlling rhythm. And the ability to ease into the rhythm of writing is largely dependent on a reader's, or writer's, familiarity with the language.

So, I would focus on periods and commas first, until you have a good familiarity with the language. That is my advice to you.

etfb• 17 years ago

"If you're using special punctuation, there is almost always a more eloquent way of articulating your sentence/thought."

Thank you. You've just fixed my writing style. I owe you a large drink.

(No, seriously. I use semi-colons, colons and em-dashes -- pretentious and pedantic though they be; fun though it be to be better educated than my audience -- entirely too often: see? With the above quotation in my arsenal, I shall cease forthwith. Consider me indebted to you for any clarity I may thus gain.)

DannoHung2• 17 years ago

Aw, but I love the semicolon; it let's you do CRAZY things!

boredguy8• 17 years ago

Many standard rules for punctuation are actually merely the outcome of a need for movable type printing presses to save money and are incoherent in 2009. For instance, standard punctuation would have me write: Please append the extension ".txt." For clarity, I'd re-write: Please append the extension ".txt" to the file. Much of this comes from the notion that punctuation resides insides the quote marks. But the rule comes from a practice fueled by function: the period and comma were the two most breakable tiles for printers, and having them inside another tile meant they were far less likely to break. I increasingly find myself quoting text exactly, and I place punctuation not in the original outside the quotation.

But I also use "they" as a first person singular gender-neutral pronoun: I don't know the author of that article, but they certainly did a good job. I guess I'm a grammatical progressive.

jacobolus2• 17 years ago

More reasonably: if you were typesetting something carefully, you’d stack the ” close to directly above the . and you’d use a separate typeface or color to set a precise computer string such as `.txt`. In plain text communications, I tend to avoid situations where a string like « ".txt". » might come up, because it’s confusing no matter which side of the quotation marks the period ends up on, and instead use some punctuation like «.txt» or `.txt` to make clear that this is a technical word whose precise character arrangement matters, especially since the " character is itself often meaningful in such strings.

kqr22• 17 years ago

The author of this essay is also the co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/linguistics/cgel/

Unfortunately, the author doesn't recommend a good alternative to Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

houseabsolute• 17 years ago

I think the last paragraph of the article demonstrates that he believes such a thing does not exist.

kqr22• 17 years ago

It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.

He says that grammar can't be reduced to a bunch of trivial rules, but that doesn't mean there can't be a good alternative to Strunk & White for teaching grammar to students.

gjm113• 17 years ago

Elsewhere (on the excellent "Language Log" blog) he recommends two books: for grammar/usage, the Merriam-Webster Concise Dictionary of English Usage; for style, Joseph Williams's "Style: toward clarity and grace".

The first recommendation I ever saw for Williams's book, FWIW, was from Richard Gabriel (founder of Lucid Inc., author of the paper commonly but misleadingly known as "worse is better" and of "Patterns of Software", and these days concentrating on poetry rather than software).

elblanco6• 17 years ago

I think it's more that none of the commonly or widely accepted guides to grammar offer advice that is correct.

nat• 17 years ago

He's written articles pretty similar to this before, and I think in the last one, he did mention the the Cambridge Grammar. Half the comments were people jumping down his throat for having a conflict of interest.

liquidcool• 17 years ago

I can offer a great alternative:

Style: Lessons In Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams http://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-Grace-10th/dp/02...

This book is a simple, step by step guide to making you a better writer. By chapter 2 you're already writing much clearer prose. It's one of those books you want to read every couple of years.

I'd also recommend the essay "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

RevRal3• 17 years ago

Some advice in S&W really confused me; like, on the word prestigious: "just because it's in the dictionary doesn't mean you should use it."

Oh, okay. What? There are a lot of words in the dictionary. Is the advice that the word is used too much? If so, not very clear.

kw_2• 17 years ago

I haven't read S&W, but I have three main reasons for avoiding that word:

1) If it's really prestigious, I shouldn't have to mention that fact.

2) If I want you to think it's prestigious, I should show, not tell. It was given 3 michelin stars and won best film at cannes, or whatever the case may be.

3) It's possible that many from the target markets in Asia/Europe/etc won't know what it means anyway. As such, I try not to use complex language unless it's crucial to the message.

edit: not to mention, prestige is subjective. Some people think a glowing writeup in a particular publication is prestigious. Others think it's noise. It's hard to claim either group is wrong.

pbz• 17 years ago

As far as #3 I would argue that you can't know what word a foreigner might find difficult. If you're coming from a Romance language, for example, words that may sound "fancy" or could be considered difficult by natives are actually easier because of their common Latin root.

Goladus2• 17 years ago

> 1) If it's really prestigious, I shouldn't have to mention that fact.

If the context for prestige is obvious but unfamiliar, for example if you are telling a fictional story and establishing background, then we don't have to assume prestige should be evident. Also, if the proper name of the subject is unknown then it would be impossible for the prestige to be evident.

> 2) If I want you to think it's prestigious, I should show, not tell. It was given 3 michelin stars and won best film at cannes, or whatever the case may be.

The subject may not be so important that it deserves so much attention. If the use of the word 'prestige' and its subject are secondary to the point of the sentence or paragraph, elaborating may distract from the main point. Such is the case with many abstract words that people interpret differently. If it's the main point then I agree.

> edit: not to mention, prestige is subjective. Some people think a glowing writeup in a particular publication is prestigious. Others think it's noise. It's hard to claim either group is wrong.

Many abstract words are subjective. I think that finding the balance between detail and abstraction is a core writing skill. Too much detail can be tedious, condescending, unnecessary and can obscure or confuse the main point. Too much abstraction and people will misunderstand the message without realizing they've misunderstood the message.

mtts• 17 years ago

There are a lot of words in the dictionary you shouldn't use. They're obscure, don't have a meaning that isn't expressed equally well by another word (or limited number of other words) and/or don't actually mean that much. They exist on the fringe of a language and as such should be documented in a dictionary, but if your aim is to communicate clearly through writing, you shouldn't use them.

pushingbits• 17 years ago

Previous discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557618

bdr• 17 years ago

I recommend reading it anyway. It may not be the authority on grammar, but it can teach you a lot about (surprise!) style.

selven3• 17 years ago

One grammar question that I don't know the answer to. When you have a statement using "than" (eg. A cow is bigger than an ant) using pronouns, what case is the word after "than" supposed to go into.

Is it always: I am bigger than him. I see him better than her. He does it better than me.

Or is it: I am bigger than he. I see him better than her He does it better than I

The first one is way more common colloquially, but I see the second one used in some formal styles. And it makes more sense too - it resolves the ambiguity between "I see him better than her" [I see him better than she does] and "I see him better than her" [he is more visible to me than she is].

parenthesis• 17 years ago

I think the latter is `correct' because it is:

I am bigger than he [is].

I see him better than she [does].

I see him better than [I see] her.

He does it better than I [do].

teilo• 17 years ago

The word "than" is not a preposition. It is a conjunction after which a verb and sometimes a subject are commonly omitted, but understood, because they are the same verb or subject as in the preceding sentence.

Therefore all you really need to do is understand that the portion of the sentence following "than" is itself a sentence. Just supply the missing words, and the correct case will shine forth.

"I run faster than he."

is really:

"I run faster than he runs."

and not:

"I run faster than him runs."

Therefore "he" is correct.

elblanco6• 17 years ago

In language, the "correct" case is the more common case for a given variant of the language. The class "English" is composed of the aggregate sum of many variants of the class (dialects, accents, etc.).

Languages change, what was "correct" a century ago may no longer be correct today.

This means the writer has to understand the variant of the language the reader is using, and target that. If your target audience prefers one over the other, that's the "correct" one.

There is no such animal as "correct English" since the definition of "correct English" is set merely by the most culturally powerful subgroup of users of some variant of the language.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

It depends on what you mean. Take this example:

I like video games more than my girlfriend.

A) I like video games more than she does. == I like video games more than she likes them.

B) I like video games more than her. == I like video games more than I like her.

psygnisfive2• 17 years ago

Pay no mind to the people who commented before me.

The phrase that follows the comparative preposition "than" is not necessarily a reduced clause. It's actually almost always a simple noun phrase, taking the default accusative case.

"I am taller than him" is Standard American. If you were to say "I am taller than he" you'll sound like a twat.

Doesn't make sense? So what. Language isn't about making sense, it's about getting points across. There's plenty more in English that's even more confusing (exceptional case marking? oh yeah, baby, figure that one out).

Hell, even if it WERE a reduced relative clause there are plausible reasons why it could still be "him", namely, "nominative" and "accusative" are structural case, not semantic case, so they get assigned depending on the assignee's position in the sentence structure, and you could easily reduce a clause and, in doing so, put its subject into precisely the structure necessary for accusative case.

kelnos2• 17 years ago

As an alternative to poor grammar and sounding like a twat, one might simply say, "I am taller than he is." Sure, it's an extra word, but it's both correct and sounds natural.

I struggle with that occasionally. Using "him" in that sentence would make me die a little inside, but I also don't want to sound like a prick.

andrewcooke• 17 years ago

is it just me, or is the author of that article trying too hard? there's the conspicuously correct use of a semicolon; long but perfectly structured sentence with many subclauses (followed by a short sentence for contrast); etc.

i agree with the author's general comments (although I haven't read "that book"), and i am sure there's nothing incorrect in what he's written. but it's not a comfortable, relaxed piece of writing, is it?

(edit: rereading that i realised i never made my point. which is that this happens a lot. it seems to be very hard for people to write well about grammar - they always end up writing something that feels "overworked".)

Afton• 17 years ago

This is because if you make the slightest deviation from 'correct grammar' in a piece about grammar, you'll be attacked mercilessly. Every word, every m-dash, requires an unshakable argument for its correctness in that context.

Pity really, but as long as it's cheap and easy to attack anything with a whiff of hypocrisy...

Semiapies• 17 years ago

Well, when you're making that sort of accusation of hypocrisy, you're best off trying to avoid it.

BearOfNH• 17 years ago

Good article but he digs too deep. I would be happier if students just learned to use "should have", not "should of", and related constructs. This seems prevalent even among the college-educated these days.

Does a programmer's spelling and grammar correlate with the quality of his[/her] code?

stcredzero2• 17 years ago

I've found that it doesn't correlate with their analytical ability or ability to architect a clean system. But it does affect the readability of their code.

DannoHung2• 17 years ago

I would imagine that vocabulary would have a greater effect than their spelling or grammar.

grellas2• 17 years ago

The author's obsession with panning S&W reminds me of crazy Joe Davolla in an old Seinfeld episode ("Jerry, I've got a hair on my lip and you put it there" or something to that effect).

For me, S&W was helpful in some ways but also led me to feel that I was in a straight-jacket as I tried years ago to follow its prescriptions.

It is good to be simple, direct, brief, and clear. But simple, short, and active can become simplistic, monotonic, and rigidly unnatural. A bad writer may ignore good-writing rules, but an equally bad one will apply them one-dimensionally in arty or mechanical fashion. A good writer will do neither. Thus, while ill use of passive voice can lead to stylistic pomposity, a categorical exclusion of passive voice can lead to a staccato and unnatural style. The same can be said of any arbitrary attempt to use exclusively short words or sentences. Attempting to follow S&W without thought can lead a writer into this trap.

In my view, the best was to master English grammar is to master a highly stylized (inflected) language such as Latin and to work backward from that to the "analytic" rules that govern English. Anyone who does this will have a much greater grasp of technical points of grammar than one gets through memorizing a few prescriptive rules such as those found in S&W. Once the deeper technical points are well-understood, one can "let them go" in developing a natural writing style that nonetheless reflects a high degree of excellence for having the technical mastery underlie it. This is akin to learning to do algorithms after having mastered deep principles of mathematics. With the deeper technical understanding, your work will be far more robust than otherwise. All this is another way of saying that, to achieve excellence in grammar as in anything else, there is no substitute for plain hard work and perseverance.

If S&W has one primary fault, it lies in stating or implying (incorrectly) that mastery of a few rules can provide a good shortcut to this goal.

jacobolus2• 17 years ago

> The best was to master English grammar is to master a highly inflected language such as Latin and to work backward from that to the "analytic" rules that govern English.

I agree with everything you said until you got to here. There are reasons to learn Latin, and it will certainly help for writing English, but putting the time in to master Latin is hardly the “best” way to master English grammar, which differs from Latin grammar in as many ways as it agrees. My guess is that learning to read 3 or 4 other languages moderately fluently, or just putting that time into careful analytic reading and writing in English would be just as useful. (Of course, without evidence, both of our comments here are speculative. I’d like to see some comparative studies – though to do them properly would be difficult, so I’m not sure any have been done that would really settle the matter.)

Personally, I think grammar is one of those subjects whose formal study should be delayed as long as possible, assuming that students are spending time reading and writing and carefully analyzing rhetoric and logic of what they read and hear. The emphasis on tools over content, in language just as much as in mathematics, has the potential to devalue creativity and engagement, and lends itself to the kind of rote instruction that leaves humans bored out of their skulls.

> This is akin to learning to do algorithms after having mastered deep principles of mathematics.

Weak analogy. The particularities of Latin grammar are not of the same kind as the “deep principles of mathematics.” Maybe studying syntax in a linguistics course or two could be compared, but I still think it’s a stretch.

> no substitute for plain hard work and perseverance.

With the rest of this paragraph out of the way, you’re right again with this final statement, though it’s a bit of a platitude.

grellas2• 17 years ago

I think I did overstate the case for Latin in this context. It is a good way to help with English grammar, mainly because (in my view) it forces you to think about and apply important grammatical principles in ways that a rules-based approach to teaching English grammar often does not. But, point well taken, it likely is not the best way to make use of one's limited time for this purpose.

I like your other points about grammar as well - very thoughtful.

elblanco6• 17 years ago

> such as Latin

Funny you've selected Latin as a way to learn a Germanic language like English. This is a mistake that's been made many times before.

A classic essay on the subject: http://www.newdream.net/~scully/toelw/Lowth.htm

nihilocrat2• 17 years ago

The presence of heavy inflection is a good way to jolt the mind of someone who, being monolingual in English, has to be taught some of the simplest things, like what a direct object is (notice how hardly anyone says "whom"). I think learning a Germanic langauge is still effective, but modern Latin education fetishizes grammar so much that it really emphasizes and analytical understanding of language. The fact that the language is effectively not living lets them get away with this; there are many cases in many languages of bad grammar becoming so common that it's understood as an exception rather than a mistake makes a living language easier to "cheat" with.

I see the wisdom of the link you posted, but I still think Latin is a good way to generically learn Indo-European grammar so long as you don't act like all Indo-European language must act like Latin, which is the grave mistake grammarians make in the examples pointed out.

mhb• 17 years ago

"Do not explain too much."

elblanco6• 17 years ago

I've long thought that this book was a subtle attempt at humor.

jeromec4• 17 years ago

If we're asking questions here... If a group was going into a restaurant, but saw it was dirty would it be "they changed their mind" or "they changed their minds"?

assemble4• 17 years ago

It would be: they changed their minds.

Why? "they" refers to the group members, because "they" is a plural pronoun.

"It changed its mind" would be how you could write the first phrase. In this phrase, "it", a singular pronoun, would refer to the group.

jeromec4• 17 years ago

Got it, thanks. What about if it read "but everybody changed their mind" or would it be minds?

cletus• 17 years ago

Boy, that post sure could've used some headings or something to liven up what is otherwise a monotonous, self-indulgent rant.

One thing one has to remember with grammar is that people can't even agree on whether it's prescriptive or descriptive.

It still bugs the hell out of me when (North) Americans say "Will you write me?" WRONG WRONG WRONG, at least in a prescriptive sense. In actual English it is "Will you write TO me?". Note the difference:

- Will you write me a letter? (indirect then direct object) - Will you write a letter to me (direct then indirect; uses the preposition "to"); - Will you write a letter to me? (indirect object only)

Only Americans (and possibly Canadians) do it.

The point is than in a purely prescriptive sense, that's wrong and most people tend to argue that what they use is correct. Language and grammar evolves giving far more credence to the descriptive view.

But I digress...

50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice

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