Being the Grammar Police

For nearly two years, I’ve written posts about grammar and usage, so clearly it’s a topic that I think is important. Equally important, I think, is knowing when it’s appropriate to insist on proper grammar and how to go about it.

You hear of cases now and then in which people go into public and make a big show of correcting grammatical problems on signage. Take for example this instance that resulted in probation for two men who fixed the grammar on a sign at Grand Canyon National Park. The men in fact went on a nationwide crusade to fix public typos, as documented in an NPR story and a book.

Focus On: Grammar Blogs

You might have noticed that we’re grammar nerds here at the Daily Post. While we’re healthily obsessed with the topic, we don’t post about it exclusively, but there are some bloggers who do. If you’d like to try your hand at posting about grammar or linguistics, here are some ideas inspired by WordPress.com grammar bloggers:

• Rant about your pet peeve. Does a particular mistake really make your blood boil? Do you grit your teeth every time someone says “for all intensive purposes”? Does it make you scream whenever someone verbs a noun? Blog (forgive the verbed noun) about it. The outlet will do you good.

Does Grammar Matter?

My post of last week on the proper use of “me,” “myself,” and “I” was my most popular to date if the comments are any indication. If you stuck around for the comments, you will have seen a little bit of debate on how much it really matters to use the language as the grammar fuddy duddies (of which I am one to some degree or another) would have us use it. Commenter nrhatch provided a link to a fun YouTube video narrated by comedian Stephen Fry that I’ll relink below:

There are no doubt many schools of thought on how important it really is to get the language “right.” I’ll consider two.

The pragmatist will say that as long as the writing in question conveys the desired message, the finer points of grammar don’t matter a whole lot. That is, if I write “Johnny and me are going to the unicorn store,” nobody’s going to mistake my meaning, and “Johnny and I are going to the unicorn store” adds no real clarity. So the pragmatist may say that insisting on the me/I distinction in such a sentence amounts to insisting on a rule for the rule’s sake (you might call this pedantry) and not because the rule is actually terribly valuable. From the perspective of a pragmatic and forgiving grammarian, being called down for the me/I distinction in a case like the one I cite here might seem a lot like being given a traffic ticket for rolling gently through a well-lit and deserted intersection in the dead of night in spite of the stop sign. Sure, you’ve broken the law, but it burns you up to get the ticket and you might mutter a few choice words under your breath about the police officer as you drive away.

Then, of course, there are the sticklers (or SNOOTs). The sticklers insist upon proper usage sometimes even to the point of awkwardness. Sometimes, a sentence just reads better if you split the darned infinitive or end it with a preposition, but the sticklers will have none of it. The sticklers carry grammar first-aid kits for fixing ungrammatical signs they find in public. They point out misuse of “whom” in Facebook posts to their offending friends and family.The sticklers do things like write blog posts about how to use objective and subjective pronouns properly, and they most assuredly read books like Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (even if they disagree with Mr. Strunk’s agenda).

I fall somewhere between the two camps, or paradoxically somehow in both of them. Although I happily use informal language in my speech and in many of the things I write, I generally know the rules pretty well (I even know why some of them, like the split infinitive rule, are stupid). I don’t insist upon the rules, but I geek out with other grammar nerds when we’re thrown together. I think having a standardized grammar serves some defensible purposes, and my posts here to date have reflected an interest in exposing the rules to those who’re interested, but I also know that our usage rules evolved from our usage. Speech patterns emerged before anybody ever wrote the first grammar book.

Since there had been some debate in the other post, I thought I’d dedicate a post to the question of how much standard grammar and usage matter. Do you fall more on the pragmatic side or the stickler side? If you’re more of a pragmatist, how far are you willing to go? For example, would you accept a sentence like “River jumped clothes no into while wearing he Saturday last the”? It pretty clearly conveys information but is far from standard usage. If you’re more of a stickler, are there any of the standard rules you’re willing to relax a bit? If so, what criteria do you use to decide which rules to relax?

The Use of Medicine

Having closed out my grammar series, I’m now starting up a new series of posts in which I’ll share an excerpt from something I’ve read that made an impression on me and explain what I liked about it. The idea here is that appreciating compelling or artful writing can help us to become better writers ourselves. In this first installment, I consider a story by Joe Meno entitled “The Use of Medicine” and collected in his 2005 book of stories entitled Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir.

How to Starve a Troll

Image via Flickr user christoph.grothaus

For as long as there have been blogs, there have been trolls. A troll is a commenter who hangs around your blog for the sheer purpose of annoying and goading you and your other readers.

Trolling is quite different from merely being critical. Obviously, not all of your readers are going to agree with you about everything, but a troll’s comments will rarely have anything to do with the topic at hand. For example, say you review a certain book you like. Someone might comment that she thinks it is an overrated work and doesn’t understand why anyone likes it. That’s not trolling. Even a comment as abrupt as “I’ve always hated that book” isn’t trolling, because, while it’s not particularly interesting, it’s at least a response to what you’ve written.

A troll, on other hand, is not actually trying to express anything. Rather, a troll is seeking to provoke a reaction from you or your other readers.

The Semicolon

Tasked this week with explaining how to properly use a semicolon, I thought immediately of the poster designed by the fellow behind web comic The Oatmeal. He’s done a number of grammar posters, and there’s very little I could add to the explanation he offers. I’ll summarize, but for some colorful examples, be sure to check out his post.