As part of my summer reading (which is a sizable list: the majority of 3 literature textbooks, at least 3 canonical novels, and some other smaller works purely for enjoyment), I am taking a look at two grammar texts that I happened upon in my new classroom, obviously left from previous teachers (either the most recent one or the veteran who retired the year before). One should be familiar to many: William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style. I can’t say I’m surprised to see this one, honestly, given how revered it is in so many circles.
The other is Things Your Grammar Never Told You (there’s a picture of an old woman on the cover, supposedly a grandmother figure – get it, grammar, gramma? …yeah) by Maurice Scharton and Janice Neulieb. The latter is a figure familiar to me: she is a professor at nearby Illinois State University, the executive secretary of IATE, and the editor of the Illinois English Bulletin. (At least one of my regular readers should be familiar with her as well.)
I’m about 50+ pages into the latter – I’m saving up my energy for Elements after hearing both the highest praise and serious criticism of it – and while it has a lot of redeeming qualities (computer tips, for instance, which are interspersed throughout the chapters), I have my reservations about many of the things it says. A full review will of course be in order once I finish it. (Whether or not I say anything much about Elements depends on how much of my comments will be any different than what more knowledgeable people like Geoff Pullum have already said.)
June 20, 2009 at 9:50 am
Have I already recommended Joe Williams’s excellent article, “The Phenomenology of Error”? College Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, No. 2, (May, 1981), pp. 152-168. Read it! But in case you can’t, he quotes E. B. White’s advice (“Express coordinate ideas in similar form”) and his practice (in “Death of a Pig”: “Fred can direct the mourner to it unerringly and with immense good will” and “I have written this account in penitence and in grief . . . and to explain my deviation….”). And again: White’s advice (“‘that’ is the defining or restrictive pronoun, ‘which’ the non-defining or no-restrictive….The careful writers…removes the defining ‘whiches,’ and by so doing improves his work”) and practice (same essay: “a departure which the community marks solemnly on its calendar”).
So we have two separate things: a) what writers really do, and b) what writers tell people to do. My sense is that linguistics couldn’t develop as a science until we recognized a) as the sole source of data worth studying.
June 20, 2009 at 10:39 am
That’s not the first place where I’ve seen examples just within the style book itself where the authors manage to commit the same errors that they proscribe in the book. (If I recall correctly, Orwell does the same thing in his “Politics and the English Language,” but he was at least honest enough to admit within that essay that he has probably done so.) I will try to find that article if I can, though.
I can’t say that I’m surprised that style guides tend to use the “Always”/”Never” (or “Do this”/”Don’t do that”) formulations in putting forth rules. It would be nice if, as the title of Strunk and White’s book suggests, you could just put the “elements” together and end up with good writing, but anyone who reads a variety of writing knows that there isn’t any easy formula. You can mark tendencies – and here, as you suggest, JWM, the data of how writers really write is absolutely necessary – but they can’t really be divorced from purpose, audience, genre/form, etc. But of course, if Elements did that instead, it probably wouldn’t be so revered 50 years later, for better or worse.