Nice article a friend posted on FB. Some obvious points & some fine ones. His definition of 'moot' seems overly narrow & not reflective of usage.

I chuckled when I saw them hawking Strunk & White at the article's end. BTW, I have NO tweed jackets, but confess the inferiority complex.

What's "FB?"

Most of these are not mistakes. I think the only one that is a real mistake is affect/effect and maybe lay/lie.

Most of the others have been used by some of the best writers of English for the past 2, 3, 4 hundred years. They are choices made by these good writers who presumably knew what they were doing. And they don't cause any confusion - the fact that peevers are so good at pointing out when a mistake has been made, and pointing out what the correct usage "should" be indicates that there's no problem understanding them. I don't see how they can be reasonably called mistakes.

To paraphrase http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/, so many peeves of this sort start with a contradiction: "This is an error, but everybody does it." One of these clauses cannot be true.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage debunks most of these.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

Yep, this sounds a lot like Mr. Strunk.

I was visiting my sisters recently when my father was sick, and I asked him if he wanted to "lie" down. Sister A said that Sister B had just asked the same thing...only she said "lay," while I (sister C) said "lie." We all laughed, but secretly I felt good.

Yep, a real Strunk and White fanboy. I wonder if he has shares in Longman (publisher of Elements of Syle?

"Lay" used to be a synonym for "have sex with." I suppose your sister didn't know that.

quote:

What's "FB?"

Facebook

ha ha, wow, looks like I raised a red flag.

I agree that many of the distinctions cited are unnecessary to speak informally in English. The goal is to communicate meaning effectively; lay down will do as well as lie down. Correcting someone's spoken grammar is not only unnecessary; it's distracting and rude.

However the author is an editor of written English to be published in a magazine. I do not really buy into his argument that readers are grammatically judgmental (depends on the magazine)-- though I admit I would be unhappy with an article-writer who "consulted an attorney who I met in NY". I'm thinking about books here: I take pleasure in literary prose that flows structurally. There are many shades of meaning and tone which can be lost in a narrative adopting the hasty patter of daily conversation.

I've also found it far easier to learn European languages when one has a sound grasp of English grammar, as there are many parallels.

Are we saying that we only need to know those grammatical niceties that are routinely used face-to-face?

How do y'all feel about diagramming sentences?

It's not only about spoken informal English. Most of these "errors" aren't errors in written English. English writers don't follow the that/which rule for instance. Look in any novel that's regarded as a classic of English literature and you'll find restrictive whiches. The same with whether/if, fewer/less, farther/further, since/because, disinterested/uninterested, anxious, different from/different than, bring/take, nauseous. These are simply not errors. Writers of English prose simply do not follow the rules as laid out in this article. Rules like these have nothing to do with a sound grasp of English grammar. Some of them, like whether/if, are made up out of whole cloth.

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Facebook! Duhhh... I should have known.

Say what you will, y'all, "For Who The Bell Tolls" just doesn't do it!

My issue with this has little to do with snobbery, grammatical niceties, flowing English prose, or sound grasp of grammar. My problem is that these rules are inaccurate, false, the opposite of true.

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Morphology of Peevology, a Facebook group , talks about this sort of thing. Personally, I enjoy Language Log a lot more (to my critics, I know they are different things) as the FB group seems to complain a lot, but you might enjoy it. If you do enjoy a discussion there...bring it here to WC, too!

Having read a lot of entries on Language Log about these "mistakes," I agree with goofy. They aren't mistakes at all. To me, it doesn't have anything to do with arrogance/snobbery.

English writers don't follow the that/which rule for instance. Look in any novel that's regarded as a classic of English literature and you'll find restrictive whiches.

And, the best author, whose works illustrate this, is E B White, the White of Strunk & White.

I was going to delete my last comment about Morphology of Peevology, but that would be disingenuous, I think. So, I'll 'fess up.

We all get a lot of invitations to various groups, right? I was signed up on Live Journal until they finally asked me if I really wanted the account since I've never used it. I am on Nurses.com, and they are constantly telling me that I haven't been there in awhile (never!) so I should go there. I've accepted friending it's LinkedIn and contacts are good. (I don't do the same on Facebook, though, even though I get friending requests from people I don't know.) Etc.

This is all a preface to what happened on Morphology of Peevology. Somehow I signed up for it and really didn't know much about it. There is this Richard Friedman there, and all along I have thought it was his Facebook Group. I didn't know how I found it or even when I signed up for it.

So, today on the chat...I find out that it's z's site! I was mortified that I had posted this here! I will definitely read Morphology of Peevology with a totally different eye. I am so sorry, z!

Well I can see I have a lot to learn! I'm finding wiki is very helpful: many of the pairs of words goofy lists are treated in articles delving into the history of the usage, when the preference became a prescription/ shibboleth, etc.

I expect my extended clan swallowed Elements of Style whole-- or at least my grandmother did, who was so prescriptivist that my younger siblings called her 'Grammar'. Her dad, an elder colleague of both Strunk & White at Cornell, was a classics professor whose grammatical interests lay with such esoterica as The subjunctive substantive clauses in Plautus : not including indirect questions (1901)...

LOL as we say on FB-- where I found & am enjoying reading zmj's Morphology of Peevology!

Bethree, I highly recommend Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. It's free on google books. I put a link earlier in the thread.

I highly recommend Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.

I second goofy's recommendation. Even the brick & mortar version is less than US$20 for a new hardcover copy and about 9 bucks for the Kindle version.

This site offers a free download of Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Clicking on "Download" takes you to this page, which asks you to register. Is anyone familiar with this site?

The small type warning about copyright abuse at the bottom makes me leery of doing anything with this site. Also, how did he get permission to download a free download of a book that costs $27.50 in hardcover?

Maybe I better steer clear, then. I don't want to download a virus, even if it is free. Thanks, Proof.

I do use Merriam-Webster's online dictionary regularly. Is that comparable?

Is that comparable?

Well, they both have Merriam Webster in the title and were published by the same company, but no, one is a dictionary (words, pronunciations, etymologies, and definitions) while the other is a usage guide. Take a look at the Google Book free online version that goofy linked to above. You'll see they are really quite different.

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Oh now I see it, very cool (at googlebooks), thanks goofy & z!

I found these 5 common grammar errors today. The its versus it's is really a punctuation error, isn't it?

Personally I don't think any of them are grammar mistakes and I don't think dangling participles (the ludicrous contrived "oranges" example notwithstanding) are any kind of mistake.

I agree, although many people have a much looser definition of what "grammar" means than you and I do. It's pretty difficult to make a grammatical error if we use a linguist's definition of the word.

Many people, though, include "grammatical errors" that in fact relate to orthography and style.

I ask my question again: how do y'all feel about diagramming sentences? Useful exerise for learning sentence structure, or obsolete for a good reason?... In the examples provided in Kalleh's link, I'm not sure a diagram would prove the so-clleddangling participles wrong. Is there anything really wrong with them?

Diagramming makes sense to me, but I'm a dinasaur.

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they both have Merriam Webster in the title

Webster is now in the public domain and can be used by anyone who wants to compile a dictionary. Merriam lost a copyright case back in the '80s about using the Webster name.

quote:

Originally posted by bethree5:
I ask my question again: how do y'all feel about diagramming sentences? Useful exerise for learning sentence structure, or obsolete for a good reason?... In the examples provided in Kalleh's link, I'm not sure a diagram would prove the so-clleddangling participles wrong. Is there anything really wrong with them?

We used to diagram sentences many years ago when I was at school. I never found it to be of the slightest use.

And as for your final question...

No, there isn't anything wrong with them.

quote:

Personally I don't think any of them are grammar mistakes and I don't think dangling participles (the ludicrous contrived "oranges" example notwithstanding) are any kind of mistake.

Well, maybe that dangling participle isn't an "error" or a "mistake," but it sure is confusing! I do agree with the criticism of that sentence and would never let it go to publication.

The thing is that it's always possible to create sentences like the "orange" example but no one be likely to write it with other than humorous intent.

The people who create these "grammar error" sites almost always contrive examples like this, sentences that people would be very unlikely to use in the real world.

I had no trouble at all understanding the other example.

As I indicated above, this guy uses 'grammar' to describe a much broader area than most of us. His first four errors are actually orthographical mistakes.

I don't disagree with what he says about dangling participles;

quote:

Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.

However he is more uptight about it than most. Although it is possible, it is highly unlikely a reader will be unable to understand the sentence. S/he might pause for a moment to puzzle it out, but will normally then move on, often with a laugh if the dangling participle brings up an amusing image like the decomposing brother.

Of course, it's rarely a good thing to interrupt the reader's flow in this way, and rereading and rewriting should avoid many instances. I certainly wouldn't describe wayward participles as "the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes", though.

Methinks his knickers are in need of some untwisting.

quote:

Originally posted by bethree5:
I ask my question again: how do y'all feel about diagramming sentences?

The only diagramming I've done is stuff like this.

Would Xbar theory have any bearing if English still had genders, declensions, and conjugations? It doesn't seem so to me.

Would Xbar theory have any bearing if English still had genders, declensions, and conjugations? It doesn't seem so to me.

I don't know. It seems to me that most generative theories of grammar are diagramming the relationship between the various lexical items in a sentence (or phrase). Those relationships can be surfaces as word order or inflection depending on the language. I seem to remember that the concepts of immediate dominance and linear precedence had something to do with fitting non-word-order languages into GPSG (generalized phrase structure grammar).

As to diagramming sentences: I enjoyed learning the Kellogg-Reed (link) sentence diagramming. I also enjoyed the more modern sentence diagramming methodologies, but then I love grammar and syntax and drawing.

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
Would Xbar theory have any bearing if English still had genders, declensions, and conjugations? It doesn't seem so to me.

Yes it would. X-bar theory is about how constituents are arranged in clauses, and all languages do that.

OK. It seemed to be concerned with clauses that aren't self-evident except for word placement, as is the case in current English. BTW, when did English make that transition? Chaucer's English seems essentially modern; Beowulf is Germanic. Were there any cloistered monks, relatively immune to war, famine, and pestilence, whose writings chronicle this shift?

Chaucer's English is Germanic too, but with less inflection and more Norman French borrowings than Old English. The shift happened after the Norman invasion. One reason why Middle English looks so different from Old English is because of the spelling: under the influence of Norman French, pretty much every word was respelled.

Yet French has strong verbal inflection, so it doesn't seem to follow that the change was only between the time of the Norman invasion (1066) and Caxton's printing press spreading London English far and wide (1490-something). While we usually categorize English as having three distinct periods, it seems to me that there must have been something else, another contemporaneous event during the late Middle period, driving English away from both of its inflectional forbears.

I had read that Late Old English was beginning to lose its inflections (especially nominal). Old French has less nominal inflections than Old English. The Old French verbal system has more inflections than Middle English. Many languages go from inflectional system to a more word-order syntactic system, but we do not know "why".

Old French was moving towards a more word-order system and has less inflections overall than Latin did.

Chaucer and Caxton are Late Middle English. If you look at some Late Old English and Early Modern English they do not look so different. The turmoil caused by the Norman invasion had its immediate and long-term effects on English.

Ah, Z, I think you've given me a clue! I forgot to consider that the donor languages themselves were in flux. After all, it wasn't until the Sixteenth Century that Île de France French became more or less standard in France.

Now I wonder whether there's a correlation between language change and nation building? It surely seems so.

Here's a bit of the Peterborough Chronicle, one of the earliest surviving texts of Middle English ("Middle English" being between 1150 and 1450). It looks a lot like Old English:

quote:

mc.xl. On þis gær wolde þe king Stephne tæcen Rodbert eorl of gloucestre þe kinges sune Henries. ac he ne myhte for he wart it war. þer efter in þe lengten þestrede þe sunne ⁊ te dæi. abuton nontid dæies. þa men eten. ð me lihtede candles to æten bi ... wæron men suythe of wundred ...

( From Old English to Standard English, Dennis Freeborn)

It's useful to use terms like "Old English", "Middle English" and "Modern English", but they are not discrete events. People in 1350 could have read something written in 1250, people in 1250 could have read something written in 1150, people in 1150 could have read something written in 1050, people in 1050 could have read something in 950. But people in 1350 might have some difficulty reading something written in 950.

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quote:

The thing is that it's always possible to create sentences like the "orange" example but no one be likely to write it with other than humorous intent.

The people who create these "grammar error" sites almost always contrive examples like this, sentences that people would be very unlikely to use in the real world.

I had no trouble at all understanding the other example.

I just think it's important to write with clarity, thus the sentence about the "orange" is a poor one and needs changing, whether you call it a "mistake" or not. On the other hand, I don't even see what they find wrong with the second sentence so I agree with you there, Bob.

The problem with "peevers" is that they find something wrong with everything, even when they write it themselves (thus, EB White criticizing his own excellent work in Strunk and White). However, the other side (what should we call them?) can also come across as though nothing is wrong, even when sentences are unclear. Surely, as good writers, we must try to write with clarity, right? If not, what is the point?

However, the other side (what should we call them?) can also come across as though nothing is wrong, even when sentences are unclear. Surely, as good writers, we must try to write with clarity, right? If not, what is the point?

The non-peevers aren't saying that nothing is wrong, just that what most peevers are writing about are not grammatical solecisms but matters of usage, spelling, or punctuation. You can have perfectly grammatical sentences that are unpleasingly unclear. Because a sentence is badly written and perhaps unclear as to the author's intended meaning, does not ipso facto mean that it is ungrammatical. Also, the un-peevers are usually stereotypically portrayed as some kind of linguistic anarchists where everything goes. This is not true. Almost all the non-peevers I know are concerned about writing well, clearly, and (usually) in the standard English of their country or region.

How can one take a peever seriously when they're going on about not splitting infinitives or trying to dictate when to use which as opposed to that in a relative clause? And, the truly annoying thing is that they so often get the history of their pet peeves all confused. Most peevers believe that the non-gender, singular use of they is something caused in the past 50 years by unbridled feminism, when it has been being used in the language at least since Chaucer's time and down through the ages by masterful authors. And, the non-peevers have pet peeves, too. I cannot help cringing and making judgments about a person's education when I hear them pronounce the t in often or say between you and I. I just have to remember to take a deep breath and get on with other things. Pronunciation, you cannot hear in writing, and if I saw between you and I in a formal, written document, I'd correct it to between you and me.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
However, the other side (what should we call them?) can also come across as though nothing is wrong, even when sentences are unclear.

I haven't got that sense at all. What we're saying is that 1) these "five grammatical errors that make you look dumb" are not actually grammatical errors, and 2) they don't make it impossible for someone to understand you, as the author claims. Personally, I wish peevers could talk about language accurately and without hyperbole.

Well, sometimes I hear, "I knew what the sentence meant." Yes, often that's the case. On the other hand, we are not all alike. I, for example, can take sentences very differently from others sometimes (thus, I call myself a "literalist"). For example, whether an anti-peever would believe me or not, I really, honestly thought the woman who told me that she had to "pour tea on her knees" when she met her husband's family in China...had to pour the tea on her knees. I thought it was some sort of a Chinese tradition.

Generally, though, I completely agree with both of you, Z and Goofy. It's just that clarity aspect where I don't agree.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Well, sometimes I hear, "I knew what the sentence meant."

Often in conversations like this I will write something like "X is understandable" or "X is commonly used in context Y" or I will give some interesting fact about X. But other people take my words to mean "I endorse X" or "I think X is good/correct/the best thing to use in this situation". But I'm not saying that at all.

Could you take "She poured the tea on her knees" to also mean that given the two teapots, one on her knees and the other on a table, she chose to pour tea from the teapot on her knees? Syntactically, that is a possible parsing of the sentence. Most of these problems (like the Panda who ate, shot, and left) are not nearly so problematic when taking meaning and context into consideration. Very few sentences exist entirely on their own in some kind of linguistic vacuum. But, I am willing to believe you are a literalist and leave it at that.

quote:

But, I am willing to believe you are a literalist and leave it at that.

Well, if you are saying that given a little more time, you would have figured it out, you are probably right (I hope so!). If that is enough for communication, then I'll leave that at that. Remember, however, I work in a field where the leading cause of medical errors is miscommunication. Further, medical errors are the 8th cause of death in the U.S. So, clear communication may be a little more sensitive to me.

quote:

But I'm not saying that at all.

Okay, goofy. That makes sense. I'll try to remember it for next time!