Comments on: Current reading: Two little grammar texts http://docereestdiscere.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/current-reading-two-little-grammar-texts/ Musings on language and teaching Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:40:27 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: GB http://docereestdiscere.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/current-reading-two-little-grammar-texts/comment-page-1/#comment-161 GB Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:39:59 +0000 http://docereestdiscere.wordpress.com/?p=282#comment-161 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 <i>Elements</i> did that instead, it probably wouldn't be so revered 50 years later, for better or worse. 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.

]]> By: JWM http://docereestdiscere.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/current-reading-two-little-grammar-texts/comment-page-1/#comment-160 JWM Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:50:49 +0000 http://docereestdiscere.wordpress.com/?p=282#comment-160 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. 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.

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