Among the things I get hot under the collar about, of which there are a disconcertingly large and growing number, is people trying to strike fear into the hearts of their fellow humans by suggesting their grammar may not be up to scratch.
I’ve just read such an article, the title of which I considered sharing with you before discretion and a smidgen of begrudging compassion for the writer won out. Published by a company that provides proofreading services, it lists a handful of ways that the careless or untutored writer may go astray in the dark and spooky woods we call The English Language.
Among the dangers lurking in the undergrowth are the misuse of homophones; for example, mistaking their for there. Another is plonking an apostrophe where it’s not needed, as some people - most famously grocers - are wont to do with plurals.
“Proper grammar is essential for effective communication”, the article gravely intones, without offering any supporting evidence.
I react badly to this kind of thing for three reasons. The first is that it makes a mountain out of a molehill. You want effective communication? Then get good at being simple and concise if you’re a business or science writer, and good at storytelling if you write fiction.
If your grammar’s a little unusual (no one’s grammar is “wrong”), big deal. I’d far rather deal with that than a report writer who takes 10 pages to tell me what they could have done in five. Or a dull storyteller.
The second reason for my grumpiness is that a significant portion of the people I work with are immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. They’re mostly working overtime to master a second language in a country that already identifies them as “other”. The last thing they need is a culture that marks them down even further in the social pecking order for their failure to always know where a near-meaningless squiggle should or shouldn’t go.
Learning a second language after the age of six or seven is a herculean task. Almost no one doing so ever achieves the same level of proficiency as they do in their first language. Recognising this, Montreal neurologist and Lamar Roberts formulated the critical period hypothesis, which states not only that the first few years of life are critical for acquiring your first language, but that the reason for this is connected to how the brain develops at that age.
This has led to the maxim regarding learning a second language, that younger equals better in the long run. That tells me that anyone learning a second language as an adult is entitled to respect, if not awe. What they don’t deserve is hearing that a lack of panache with that language’s more subtle conventions marks them out as failing.
Here’s the third and (probably) final reason I get antsy about this kind of article. Only in the most generous of terms can the things it’s talking about be called grammar.
Getting your homophones mixed up is a spelling error. Misusing apostrophes is a mistake in punctuation. The next “error” the article highlights is run on sentences, which is a stylistic issue, not a grammatical one. (It also provides this sentence as an example: “I woke up early this morning, I went for a jog, I showered and got dressed, I ate breakfast and went to work”. The problem with this example is that if the writer’s intending to create a sense of busyness and urgency in the narrator’s day, the sentence does that job very well. Long sentences are an effective tool in a good writer’s toolbox.)
The article does what so many articles of this kind do: Suggest that grammar is something that must be studied and learned, and that some people are good at it while others aren’t. (It also does so in prose so dull that it serves as a great demonstration that being “good” with grammar in no way makes you a good writer.)
Its definition of grammar puts it at odds with most linguists, who see grammar as the rules and procedures that allow users to create meaningful sentences in a given language. Anyone who speaks any language does so according to that language’s grammar. You can neither avoid it nor can you do it “wrong”.
What the article is talking about is sometimes called the prestige variety of the language - the version that is most likely to earn the approval of those wielding the greatest influence. That version has as much to do with grammar as the arrangement of cutlery at a restaurant has to do with nutrition.
It’s a sad fact of life, however, that some people will not only judge you on your ability to use apostrophes “correctly”, but they will put more weight on that than they do on the PhD you earned from a university they have not heard of, or the years of experience you have as an engineer in a foreign land, where a badly built bridge will collapse with the same vigour as one built badly anywhere else, and a bad engineer will be found out by the same implacable laws of physics as apply throughout the world.
I get grumpy with my peers who take advantage of this by fostering even greater fear among those who lack confidence. I look forward to the day they suggest to those doing the judging that a little compassion, humility and vision go a long way in today’s multicultural world.
I also look forward to the day when they stop demonstrating that they don’t understand the very subject they’re offering their expertise on. Call errors of spelling what they are - errors of of spelling. Likewise with punctuation, or style. Just, please, stop calling them grammatical errors.
They’re not. And you, my friend, are barking up a small, self-serving and insignificant tree.
Bits and specious
The city of Buffalo in western New York state was never home to any buffalo (or bison for you pedants).
On that basis, I’ve suggested to my wife that we rename our residence “Money”.
The placebo effect is not only real, but in the US is increasing. By 2013, drugs produced only 8.9% more pain relief than placebos, compared to 27.3% in 1996. Weirdly, it seems this is only happening in the US. More here.
Neilsen’s Law: Network connection speeds for high-end home users increase 50% per year. As a corollary, since this growth rate is slower than that predicted by Moore’s Law of processor power, user experience will remain bandwidth-bound.
Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. It was formulated in 1965 and has held true since then, but is widely expected to no longer hold some time in 2025.
Quote of the week
When a thought takes one’s breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
FWIW, Moore's law simply can't work for long. Nature doesn't allow permanent exponential increases. In every measurable aspect of life, from cell functions to populations to inventions to business, sustainable growth starts fast and then levels off to a steady maturity. Anyone who tells us to expect exponential growth is lying, usually for a self-serving purpose.