In some earlier posts I mentioned that we were having a grammar workshop. Most of us thought it would really be an advanced course in business writing, as all our employees have at least bachelor degrees; many have master's degrees, and several of us have PhDs. We all write a lot, from emails to Board of Director reports to white papers and position papers that are widely distributed.

I honestly thought it would be better than it was. But...OMG! It seemed like Strunk and White took up residence with us.

First, the instructor informed us that this was such a complicated subject that our 15 minute breaks (this was an 8-hour meeting!), would be broken into two 7 1/2 minute breaks. Then we began with the "hardest" lesson of all: when to use "who/whom." Of course, we were told never to use the passive voice. And so on.

To be honest, I decided not to waste my day in that class so I left after an hour. But I did bring our "workbooks" home so that I could post something about it every so often.

The first goal of the workshop was: Define the parts of speech and their function. That's a fourth grade goal, in my book. It went downhill from there.

Here is a selection of a "very hard" test that we had to take:

1) Neither of the employees (has, have) been with the company very long.

2) One cause of poor writing (is, are) the use of poor grammar.

3) Many business professionals make (his, their) business letters too complex.

4) I am going with (whoever, whomever) I wish.

5) (We, Us) and (she, her) will go to the board meeting.

6) Mr. James, (who, whom) the firm will promote, is on a business trip.

7) A writer (needs, need) to know his audience when he begins to write anything.

8) In writing, two sentences (is, are) often better than one.

And so on...

I have no idea how common "whom" and "whomever" are in America but they are decidedly uncommon in modern UK English. There are occasional picky pedants who would criticise the use of "who" and "whoever" but if the "correct" answers to 4) and 6) were whomever/whom then I'd have been involved in an argument with your trainer.
But of course I wouldn't have got there because they'd have dragged me kicking and screaming from the auditorium when I was told to never use the passive and reacted by demonstrating how a trainer is strangled.

I'll bet he didn't even know, grammatically, what the passive voice is. SOunds like one of those people who confuse it with "vague about agency".

Bad training is worse than no training.

Anybody else want a turn on the soap-box?

Pedant that I often am, I feel that there are cases wherein "whom" is still the better choice.
"For whom the bell tolls" dances on my ears; "who the bell tolls for" does not.

"For whom the bell tolls" dances on my ears; "who the bell tolls for" does not.

Probably because the former is the title of a book, which in turn came from a piece of 17th century English prose by John Dunne, "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions".

quote:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Certes, thou art correct, Sir Jauffrey. For a verb that daunceth upon thine ears 'tis a silly wight.

1 deals with subject-verb agreement, 4 and 6 are who/whom, and 5 is conjoined pronouns. These are all disputed usages and different people might give different answers. They're not the sort of thing I'd expect in an advanced writing course, but whatever.

But 2, 7 and 8 seem like a case of grammatical versus ungrammatical. I'd be surprised if an educated native speaker got them wrong. With 3, if it was made clear that the subject "business professionals" was the antecedent of the pronoun, then the only grammatical answer is "their".

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

In all fairness, I chose the easy ones (though I threw in a few "who/whoms" since our instructor thought them so "complex"). I agree, goofy, that educated native speakers wouldn't get 2, 7, and 8 wrong, and I hope no one did.

I, too, was afraid I'd rant, Bob, and that's why I left the class. I was all ready to pull a Language Log on her when she said never to use the passive voice. However, you choose your battles, so I just left and went back to work, explaining why to my boss since it was "mandated" for us.

As I said, every so often I will add tidbit or two from the 2 books we got. Today I thought I'd give you a whiff of some of the Web sites they recommend. They may be just fine; I haven't gone to them yet.

1) Grammar Lady

2) Grammar Now

3) Grammar Slammer Online

I note they didn't talk about Language Log or Language Hat or even Friends of Epicaricacy .

I've glanced briefly at them. The first two appear to be the kind of site that I hate for non-language reasons. They are little more than lists of commercial sites and courses.
Grammar Slammer, from a two minute glance, seems to be the usual mix of some bits of good advice with personal preferences and popular grammar myths.


As I say, that's an assessment based on about two minutes and may be inaccurate.

quote:

that's an assessment based on about two minutes and may be inaccurate.

I already knew of the first two, but not Grammar Slammer. I took a short look around there. A spent a little longer than Bob: about five minutes and came to the same conclusion.

There was some good advice - for instance they say it's OK to sometimes split infinitives - but some of the advice is still too prescriptive. For example, the American dialect construction A ... ways is stated simply to be wrong - no argument.