A former Morning Call colleague recently sent me a New York Times newsletter by John McWhorter, a linguistics professor who has written extensively about language and race. I decided to use this as an excuse to write a Grammar Police column, once common for me but now quite rare.
Among other things, McWhorter was pointing out examples of what we today would consider bad grammar in “Little Women,” where the intelligent, literate March sisters routinely use “ain’t,” as well as “don’t” instead of “doesn’t.”
This follows another of his essays that lamented the phony rule against ending sentences with prepositions, which I’ve also dismissed in past Grammar Police columns. McWhorter, who is an associate professor at Columbia University, is much more scholarly than I am, and he actually explains how this idea evolved, while delving into Anglo-Saxon Britain, the Vikings and modern Swedish.
He also criticizes other “rules,” including those that forbid split infinitives, singular “they” and beginning sentences with “So.”
He explains in the “Little Women” essay, “I’d like to dismantle the powerful but hopeless idea that language is something to be judged rather than observed. It can be hard to process, within the bounds of our lifetimes, the randomness of our take on what ‘proper’ language is.”
I share all this in hopes of riling up some of our readers about something other than my views on Donald Trump. I know some of you Grammar Policepersons out there still are citing rules drilled into you a half-century or more ago by stern English teachers, so hearing from someone who thinks it’s OK to break so many of them may literally cause your heads to explode.
(OK, before you start dashing off letters to the editor, I did that on purpose. McWhorter pointed out that the use of “literally” for that kind of exaggeration goes back centuries, too.)
Much as I agree on the lameness of some of these time-honored rules, I’ll remind you that I’ve written lots of columns sharing and commenting on your and my pet peeves regarding grammar. I’m much more likely than McWhorter apparently is to turn judgmental when it comes to the grammar that aggravates me, such as “people that” instead of “people who,” confusion over “lie/lay” and the inability of so many people in social media, including former presidents, to spell. I think the ability or inability to speak and write formal English in certain settings can help or deter professional success.
So while I’ve always billed myself as a curator of your Grammar Police complaints rather than any kind of grammar expert myself, I’m not ready to suggest that anything goes. But I thought those of you who care about this subject might be interested in a different perspective. If you haven’t read McWhorter’s commentaries before, by all means check them out.
While we’re on the subject, I might as well catch up with some of the grammar complaints or funny headlines people have sent me over the last several months.
One of my semiregular correspondents sent me this headline from an AP News Alert: “Two police officers wounded by gunfire from home later seen on fire in Philadelphia suburb.” Talk about a bad day. First shot, then on fire.
An online photo caption had a similar problem with a loosely organized sentence. The story was about a family seeking more information about a relative who was killed in World War 2. I’ll leave the last names out, because I don’t want to make light of their efforts:
“[Name]; her dad, [his name], holding a portrait of his brother [name]; and [name] pose together with letters, documents and photos they’ve gathered in their search to learn more about what happened to him Tuesday in Palmer Township.”
Since he died in World War 2, I think it’s safe to say that nothing happened to him Tuesday in Palmer Township.
Finally, here’s instruction from a distinguished former college English professor:
“Hardly anyone seems to recognize that ‘advocate’ is a transitive verb and uses ‘advocate for’ in its place. From the Free Dictionary: A careful writer will use transitive advocate in sentences indicating the idea or action, restricting the intransitive to sentences indicating the beneficiaries.
“So, one can ‘advocate good behavior in school’ and ‘advocate for students who behave in school.’ If you insist on using for, the
first example could be written ‘be an advocate for good behavior in school.’ ”
Writing this reminded me that I do enjoy doing Grammar Police columns. If you want to comment on anything in here or vent about something else, I’ll look forward to hearing from youse.
Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. His X handle is whitebil.
