50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice (Chronicle Review)

[tokenadult]

<p>[50</a> Years of Stupid Grammar Advice - ChronicleReview.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm]50”>http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm) </p>

<p>“The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.” </p>

<p>The author </p>

<p>[Geoffrey</a> Pullum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Pullum]Geoffrey”>Geoffrey K. Pullum - Wikipedia) </p>

<p>knows what he is writing about.</p>

[mafool]

<p>***<strong><em>standing and applauding</em></strong></p>

[midmo]

<p>I thought that book went out of “style” a long time ago, until I noticed it on my daughter’s pile of books just last week (AP Lang class).</p>

[happymomof1]

<p>***<strong><em>standing and applauding</em></strong> too!</p>

[lspf72]

<p>I got The Elements of Style as a college freshman, about a hundred years ago. I’ve saved it all these years, thinking one of the kids might use it for English class… but there it sits, untouched and unappreciated. The decision’s been made – into the rummage sale box it goes!</p>

[vicariousparent]

<p>I’m glad to hear that I haven’t missed much. That book is really dull.</p>

[my_0.02]

<p>Most modern grammarians argue for linguistic descriptivism rather than linguistic prescription. It comes as no surprise that the descriptivist Geoffrey Pullum disparages the prescriptive Strunk and White.</p>

<p>Huddleston and Pullum’s [Cambridge</a> Grammar of the English Language](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-Language/dp/0521431468/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top]Cambridge”>http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-Language/dp/0521431468/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) is a monument of descriptive linguistics.</p>

<p>See [Prescription</a> and description](<a href=“Indopedia - The Indological Knowledgebase”>Indopedia - The Indological Knowledgebase)</p>

[DeirdreTours]

<p>I love “The Elements of Style” and so does my 17 year old son! Dull? Hardly, it is biting, funny and judgemental-- exactly what a grammar critique should be.</p>

[tokenadult]

<p>Here’s a better resource for learning good writing: </p>

<p>[George</a> Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946](<a href=“http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm]George”>http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>I’m a huge fan of “The Elements of Style,” for the reasons DeirdreTours cited and many more. Just because language is changing, and should change, doesn’t mean that there’s nothing of value in an older writing guide.</p>

<p>Pullum

knows what he is writing about

only insofar as (as my$0.02 points out) descriptive linguistics goes. Great field, nothing against it - but that doesn’t mean he is a better source of good advice on writing. Pretty much the contrary.</p>

<p>Strunk & White (as it’s known in the publishing world, where it remains revered) covers grammar and usage rules, but is ultimately about writing well. The essence of writing well doesn’t change, just because some grammar/punctuation rules do. </p>

<p>I’m kind of curious: How many of you who are standing up and cheering have actually read the book? How many of you think it’s a dry, rigid style guide, a la The Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA style guide? </p>

<p>“Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable.” </p>

<p>“A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in his blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”</p>

<p>" . . . even the kind of writing that is essentially adventurous and impetuous will on examination be found to have a secret plan: Columbus didn’t just sail, he sailed west, and the New World took shape from this simple and, we now think, sensible design."</p>

<p>Even within the usage section, it’s fun:</p>

<p>“Nauseous, Nauseated. The first means ‘sickening to contemplate’; the second means ‘sick at the stomach.’ Do not, therefore, say ‘I feel nauseous,’ unless you are sure you have that effect on others.”</p>

<p>If you liked Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, you’d like this; it’s just slightly out of date about some aspects of grammar.</p>

<p>lspf72, I’d love to have your copy.</p>

[skrlvr]

<p>But you miss the point of Pullum’s critique. He is essentially saying that many of the rules, suggestions etc. that S&W put forth aren’t even followed by S&W. You may like the rules, and you may think, in principle, that not following them leads to ineffective writing, but Pullum points out many cases where S&W do not follow their own rules and yet the sentences are still effective. Furthermore, he points out that many of our best writers run afoul of the rules and still we consider their writing effective. Finally, he shows that S&W actually misidentify many grammatical constructions, such as the passive.</p>

<p>Try to respond to the critique itself. It is simply an ad hominem attack to call Pullum a descriptive linguist and therefore we should not have to listen to what he says about S&W.</p>

<p>As for the descriptive/prescriptive divide, it is not that Pullum is saying ‘anything goes’. He has always argued that some writers use the language effectively and beautifully and some do not. He has argued that we should be following what the former set of writers are doing, and not what some arbitrary rule book says we should be doing.</p>

[DeirdreTours]

<p>Well said, Harriet! You did the work I was too lazy to do (and far better as well).</p>

[DeirdreTours]

<p>That very fine writers sometimes break “the rules” of good writing is not evidence that the rules are wrong, just that the rules are not absolute.<br>
The best painters seem to begin by learning “the rules”, but later break through them to express something new–that doesn’t mean that my daughter’s drawing teacher should not teach her the rules of perspective.</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>Tokenadult, how about you - have you actually read Strunk & White? It quotes Orwell, using a great example Orwell concocted to demonstrate the value of “definite, specific, concrete language.”</p>

<p>

To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood. . . . </p>

<p>[Orwell] Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account.</p>

<p>[King James Version] I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>In fact I was responding more to the responses suggesting that a linguist critiquing Strunk & White is cause for cheering and tossing the book out.</p>

<p>There are numerous instances in which Strunk & White offer examples in which bending or breaking the rules can lead to stronger, more emphatic writing. </p>

<p>My point is that whatever flaws may be found in it (and I would agree both that it has flaws, and that there’s good reason for some usages to change), the book remains a vital, vibrant guide to writing well. It’s not arbitrary; it’s nuanced and wise.</p>

[tokenadult]

<p>I’ve read Strunk and White. I’ve also read comments that the book has gone through more than one edition, and it’s possible that the edition I read years ago is not the edition that undergraduates read today. Right from the beginning, I thought that some of Professor Strunk’s pet peeves were silly, as even White acknowledged in a few cases.</p>

[jackief]

<p>Is this still the book given as the Cornell Book Award? Neither my HS or the one my kids’ attends gives this award, but as an alum I had seen this a few years ago. I had planned to looking to setup the award at my kids’ school after they had graduated.</p>

[HarrietMWelsch]

<p>

some of Professor Strunk’s pet peeves were silly, as even White acknowledged in a few cases.

Exactly.</p>

<p>Moreover, in the introduction, White offers this:</p>

<p>

Style rules of this sort are, of course, somewhat a matter of individual preference, and even the established rules of grammar are open to challenge. Professor Strunk, although one of the most inflexible and choosy of men, was quick to acknowledge the fallacy of inflexibility and the danger of doctrine. “It is an old observation,” he wrote, “that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.”

</p>

<p>White, the editor, essayist, and novelist, isn’t advocating blind following of Strunk’s rules. He’s introducing them (and explaining them, giving examples, etc.) because knowledge of the rules - historical and current - of any enterprise is of great value to anybody embarking on that enterprise. </p>

<p>And then he continues, in this book, to move from the rules to “An Approach to Style.” Here again, White is hardly the strict, dusty rulemeister: </p>

<p>

Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, ausing them to explode in the mind? Who kknows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, thought eh same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which the young writer may shape his course.

</p>

<p>So I’m asking again: Among those of you who want to throw this out, how many have actually read it? Are you <em>sure</em> you’re not thinking of the Chicago Manual of Style, or the MLA style sheet?</p>

<p>(Jackie, it’s usually up to the individual who is representing the alumni association to choose the book that goes with any particular school’s award, or to a committee of alumni.)</p>

[skrlvr]

<p>But when Pullum correctly points out that the following sentence doesn’t follow several of the S&W maxims:</p>

<p>“The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.” That is a negative passive, containing an adjective, with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase (“as a rule”) that could easily have been transferred to the beginning. Another quadruple violation.</p>

<p>Then why should we continue to follow their maxims? The very sentence that introduces the ‘rule’ breaks it without comment!! This is supposed to be helpful?</p>

<p>Why should the subject and principal verb not be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning? Why is it better to not separate than to separate? On what basis do we say that one is better than the other, other than maybe S&W’s own personal preferences. But then why do S&W get to choose and not other equally intelligent and competent writers?</p>

<p>If they are simply ‘guides’, then guide readers when to follow and when to not follow. Why break the maxims in the above sentence? Why is there some ‘compensating’ merit here?</p>

<p>If it is all ‘mysterious’, then why bother at all? The introduction asks ‘who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind’ as if no one can really address the issue, but then they go on to do just that!! </p>

<p>It really is no help to students, who slavishly follow these rules, sometimes producing sentences that are truly awful and that would be better constructed had this advice not been followed.</p>

[mafool]

<p>The problem, Harriet, may not be with the book itself, though it is fraught with inconsistency, but with the use to which it has been put. The little book has achieved an iconic status, and too many people put too much faith in some if its dicta. </p>

<p>Or, as I have been known to shout at the grammar check program, “OK! I used the passive voice! Get over it!”</p>