Tag: Grammar

A Grammarian’s Lament

KentForrester
KentForrester
5816
 

In their appeal to the common reader, grammar books probably fall somewhere between the little pamphlets with a list of warnings that come with power tools (“Don’t put your hand into the path of the bandsaw”) and the stapled pages of how-to instructions for crocheting penises (“Knit one and purl two, perv!” See postscript.)

About fifty years ago when I still had ideals and ambition, I put my heart and soul into writing a grammar book.  My sole surviving copy is a bit worn and shabby, but here’s what it now looks like.

Yes, I can conjugate the hell out of verbs and you can’t. (Ok, what’s the past participle of lay? How about the future perfect continuous of sidle? OK, I don’t know that one, but I think I knew it once.)

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Standards and Anti-Standards

Kephalithos
Kephalithos
9521
 

lol i dont know why sooooo many millennials hate grammar but whatchya gonna do about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Joking aside, this phenomenon drives me mad. Scarcely a day passes when I don’t see some flagrantly ungrammatical Facebook posting by someone who should know better. Twenty-something scientists, mathematicians, historians, poets, journalists, and even editors — editors, for goodness’ sake! — all write in the same quasi-illiterate nonstyle. When the social-media output of America’s aspiring literati is indistinguishable from that of its middle-school dropouts, something is deeply, deeply wrong. Our language’s Millennial gatekeepers haven’t merely abandoned their posts; they’ve joined the barbarians in storming the castle.

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On Preferred Pronouns

Kephalithos
Kephalithos
4124
 

I believe that preferred gender pronouns are bosh. Rubbish. Absolute tripe. And I don’t suspect that this opinion places me in a minority at Ricochet.

But, for all the controversy and argument these parts of speech generate, I’ve heard relatively little discussion of what I think is the most glaring reason why the push for PGPs amounts to mere madness — the simple fact that, in English, the pronouns “he” and “she” identify not gender (whatever that means*), but sex.**

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Member Post

Seawriter
Seawriter
76
 

I write a weekly book review for the Daily News of Galveston County. (It is not the biggest daily newspaper in Texas, but it is the oldest.) My review normally appears Sunday. When it appears, I post the previous week’s review on Ricochet. Seawriter Book Review Need grammar tips? Look no further Posted: Saturday, October 8, 2016 […]
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Member Post

Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson
177
 

There’s a new-agey kind of trend in American professional sports, especially hockey, soccer, and women’s basketball, to name teams with words that have no plural form. Examples include the Miami Heat, the Orlando Magic, the Chicago Fire, Phoenix Mercury, Indiana Fever (?!), Seattle Storm, New York Liberty, and the Minnesota Wild. I don’t understand the reasons […]
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A Quick Question for the Ricochet Grammarians

Kephalithos
Kephalithos
21553
 

Many of my Ohioan peers and coworkers omit the verb “to be” in passive constructions, especially when assigning tasks. They’ll say, “These shirts need folded,” rather than, “These shirts need to be folded,” or, “These shirts need folding.”

Today, I asked my Latin professor about this. She speculated that the form may be a “Germanism,” a bit like the infamous question, “Come with?” (In the 19th century, central Ohio harbored a sizable German population.) According to my German-major roommate, though, the German language, like English, permits only the infinitive (“needs to be folded”) and gerund (“needs folding”) in this situation.

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Member Post

Victor Tango Kilo
Victor Tango Kilo
109
 

The danger of companies that can’t English good; and can’t do other stuff good, too. Spelling Errors Kill $100M Bid: “GSA found FASA’s proposal “riddled with grammatical errors . . . lack of contractor vs. government identification; spelling errors; lack of acronym identification, consistency and accuracy; inconsistent reference and terminology; and punctuation errors.” Preview Open
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Misthiocracy has never
Misthiocracy has never
74
 

[Senator Lindsey] Graham’s spokesperson has clarified to Bloomberg that when Graham said “I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to,” that statement was “not to be taken literally.”  My language pedantry has been vindicated! Preview Open
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Further Reflections on the Teaching of Writing

Paul A. Rahe
Paul A. Rahe
2211
 

A few days ago, when I posted random ruminations on the 40 years I have spent in trying to teach freshmen how to improve their writing, I figured that next to no one would be interested. But I was wrong. As of this hour, some 86 comments have been posted, and the thread keeps on going.

With this in mind, I would like to direct the attention of Ricochet readers to a remarkable piece on this subject, entitled Getting the Words Right, which Tracy Lee Simmons published in National Review on Sept. 11, 2000 and sent to me when he read my piece. At my request, Tracy got the folks at NRO to post his article online at this link.

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Can One Teach College Students How to Write?

Paul A. Rahe
Paul A. Rahe
8734
 

Forty-three or so years ago, I had lunch in my residential college at Yale with Donald Kagan, with whom I had three years before taken a couple of courses on ancient history. I had won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and I was considering getting a Ph.D. in history in due course and teaching college for a living. Don was encouraging, but he urged me not to underestimate the downside. Half of what you end up doing, he said, will be no more interesting than driving a truck.

I am not sure whether Don got the proportion right, but his basic point was correct — and I was reminded of his remarks yesterday and again today as I graded the first batch of freshman papers to come my way. I have been doing this, I realized, for four full decades now. I have graded something like 8,000 undergraduate essays, I thought, and what does anyone have to show for it?

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One Space or Two?

A.D.P. Efferson
A.D.P. Efferson
13453
 

There is a battle going on in America and, whether you know it or not, you have chosen a side and will be judged accordingly. Unlike the Oxford comma—a polarizing debate that has ended lifelong friendships and probably caused some climate change— this problem is insidious; a daily, largely ignored conflict between millions of computer-literate Americans and the publishing community.

Which side you’re on was probably fixed back in high school typing class, when you were taught to put two spaces after a period. I don’t know why this was taught. No one does. It’s just how most of the free world has been typing since forever.

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