This article came up in my twitter feed today: Learn the F*cking Rules.

It worries me. Not that there are people concerned about grammar and language (that’s a great thing), but that they hold them to be the most important aspect of a written work. And that these people are professional editors with lots of experience in publishing.

Isn’t there more to writing than noun/verb agreement? Important? Of course. But not the end, just part of the means.

All lovers of language should read this book.

Sometime last year Chris Howell remarked in passing that undergraduates should have to spend an entire course learning how to write a sentence. At the time I was teaching some of the very undergrads he was talking about, and even though I agreed that they needed a deeper understanding of language and the funny little ideas sloshing around in their brains, I was hesitant to go off the deep end of the grammar pool. That is until I read Stanley Fish’s new book, How to Write a Sentence, and How to Read One.

First, a disclaimer: I, unlike some of my friends and many of my students, was immersed in grammar instruction both in high school and for an entire year of college linguistics. I remember diagramming sentences in tenth grade English. I know how to use commas and a lot of the parts of speech, although I still get confused by simple verb tenses like present participle. (Isn’t that like “I am eating strawberries”? See, I get confused.) And these moments of confusion about the “taxonomy,” as Fish calls it, of language worry me. Does this mean I’m not a real writer because I can’t remember what an appositive is or the difference between that and a prepositional phrase? But I feel like I’m pretty good at understanding the relationships between words and phrases and how they can be put together to make an interesting unit of thought.

And that’s the basic philosophy behind Fish’s book:

Read more »

By the way, did you know you can freeze worms and as long as you thaw them slowly, they won't die? Also, that they have multiple hearts? You probably did.

Recently a couple of friends posted this article  on Slate about using only one space after a sentence. I read it, because I’m a two-spacer, and I was pretty shocked at the level of anger associated with it. OK, OK, I’ll try to stop. I didn’t realize it was such big shit. I mean, I’ve got my own pet peeves when it comes to writing. But I’ve been a two-spacer for years. And I’d never heard that two spaces was wrong. So I admit I felt a bit hurt by everyone’s condemnation of two-spacers. I’m pretty new to the writing community, and admittedly I lack some of this kind of knowledge. 

I can’t remember if that’s how I learned to type (on a typewriter!), but I do know that in my work, two spaces are required. I’m a medical transcriptionist, and my supervisors insist on two spaces. Which is why the default on my word program is set to greenline when there’s only one space.  So even if I wasn’t in the habit of doing it already, I’ve gotten into the habit of tap tapping after a sentence, because it’s required of me. Granted, the people I work with also insist on hyphens in words like long-standing or up-to-date, which really gives me the red ass (no hyphen). I’m also forced to type numbers instead of write them out, which makes sense in the medical world, but which also forces me to continually change 4s to fours in draft after draft. 

So I’m not sure how I missed this seemingly extremely important tidbit of grammatical gold, but alright already, I’ll stop. Right after I delete all the extra spaces in this post. There. Done.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

As a self-professed grammar geek, I was a little upset to realize that I had somehow missed the news that the 16th edition of The Best Style Book Ever (aka the Chicago Manual of Style) was given a publishing date of August 1 (although Amazon claims I can have it tomorrow if I select one-day shipping—and yes, that hyphen is necessary). Had I known about this glorious event sooner, I might have thrown a party, at which the main form of entertainment would have been sharing our most despised grammar, style, and usage pet peeves (a recent one of mine is unnecessary quotation marks). I even might have served these cupcakes.

But all that aside, I can’t wait to see what additions and changes are included in this new edition. More guidelines for electronic mediums and sources is a given, and Amazon tells me there will even be something called a hyphenation table, which makes me more excited than I care to admit.

The bad news, though, is that without a job I can’t afford this marvelous piece of editorial genius (okay, that might be overdoing it slightly—maybe). Until such time that I can spend over $40 on a reference manual, I know what to ask for for my birthday.

Also, isn’t that cover just gorgeous?

When I stop and think of what grammar errors drive me the most insane, I think the misuse of words like your/you’re and their/there/they’re and its/it’s are at the top of my list, and I’m sure I’m not alone. I get snarky when I see these mistakes, such as

Your driving me nuts with your ineptitude!

or

Its time you learned how to writer properly!

and say things like, “My what again?”

These are the obvious ones, and I think it’s the apostrophe that usually throws people off, but as a grammarian, there are quite a few other blunders (and some things that I know are nothing more than pet peeves) that are sure to make my blood pressure shoot up, at least a bit. Here are a few:

• in the U.S., we use toward, not towards, just like it’s (see how I did that?) color, not colour
• punctuation outside the quotation marks, unless it’s (again!) an exception, of course
• IM speak or text speak or whatever it’s called these days (but lolspeak is acceptable in certain circumstances, including the Bible)
• not capitalizing the word I (I’m looking at you, McDonalds)
• the absence of the serial comma, because my parents, Angelina Jolie and God means something totally different than my parents, Angelina Jolie, and God

So what drives you insane?