This post about a new grammar book that just came out isn’t about the book itself. Instead, I think we should consider the initial reaction.
This week, I offer something a bit different in my grammar category. I’m not writing about some newly-accepted grammatical convention that should never pass anyone’s muster. I also am not presenting a post to explain the difference between two commonly-confused words. This week, I give you my take on someone’s review of a Washington Post review of a new grammar book.
Sound confusing? Trust me: It will all become clear soon enough.
The new grammar book in question is called Says Who? by Anne Curzan. I’ll give you a sense of the book’s tone by sharing its subtitle: “A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words.”
Yes, Curzan, a linguist and professor of English language, literature, linguistics, and education at the University of Michigan, used funner, which isn’t a word. At least, it’s less of a word than irregardless, which is a nonstandard word. That’s a fancy way of saying, “Don’t use it.”
I haven’t read the book yet. I planned to start on reading it before writing this post. Since the book was just recently released, I knew my nearest bookstore, Barnes and Noble, would have a copy. They did. But they wanted $29 for it. Amazon offered the same book for under $23.
So I saved $6 and get the book a few days from now.
The battling reviews
I learned of the new book’s existence when I stumbled on a review by Louis Cannon at the Pagosa Daily Post. But Cannon’s review isn’t really a review of Curzan’s book, since he acknowledges that he hasn’t read it, yet, either.
I imagine a lot of what Cannon knows about Curzan’s book came — in part — from the book excerpt on the Amazon page.
From that excerpt, I learned that Curzan classifies two types of people: “Grammandos,” borrowing a phrase introduced in a 2012 New York Times Magazine article; and “wordies,” which she acknowledges reached the pages of Merriam-Webster in 2018.
The grammandos are the grammar sticklers, those we also know as “grammar police” and “grammar Nazi,” a phrase that causes a great deal of angst for obvious reasons. She defines the wordie as one who delights in language’s shifting landscape.
It appears to me that Curzan leans far more toward being a wordie than a grammando. That didn’t seem to set particularly well with Michael Dirda, who wrote a review of Says Who? in The Washington Post. Dirda titled his review “Stop trying to make language ‘funner.’ Grammar rules exist for a reason.”
Citing other reviews, Cannon says that Curzan reminds us that “we should she reminds us that “context and social situation should always be considered, when we write, or speak.”
“Adjust your words to your audience.,” Cannon writes. “You wouldn’t talk to your boss in the same way you talk to your children… or the way you try to chat up an attractive stranger in a bar.”
Cannon then cites the following passage from Dirda’s review:
Curzan repeatedly emphasizes that language evolves, that we should welcome change, that new words express new ideas and thoughts. No one would argue otherwise. Yet rules define any game. Without them, games wouldn’t even exist. Similarly, the traditional principles of sentence structure, verb agreement and even spelling ensure effective and clear communication. Grammar helps us to say what we mean and others to know rather than guess what we’re talking about.
Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
Cannon disagrees with Dirda, writing, in part:
Grammar doesn’t help us say what we mean. Grammar defines our social class, and the region of the country where we grew up and learned to talk. Sure, rules are important when you’re playing a game, like maybe baseball, or poker. But I would never use the rules for baseball while playing poker. Nor while chatting up my attractive boss in a bar.
Louis Cannon, Pagosa Daily Post
The reviewer and the reviewer’s reviewer seem to be on opposite sides, too.
I guess I fall somewhere in the middle
I would like to think that most of us who might carry the label grammando don’t automatically hate anything new when it comes to language. What we hate — what I lose patience with — is something new that doesn’t make sense. Or something new that might confuse the reader or listener.
As communicators, we should always strive to be clear and easy to understand. When we give up that goal to be too much of a wordie, we’re missing the point of communication.
I’m afraid I side with Dirda on the part about rules in grammar. Yes, they are there. Yes, they help the message makes sense.
Remember the little character of Yoda in the Star Wars universe? His speech pattern seemed to be opposite most everyone else’s.
Yoda might say, “Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.”
We would say, “You have become powerful. I sense the dark side in you.”
There are rules in grammar. Yoda’s speech pattern doesn’t break them, per se. We understand what he’s saying even if he says it seemingly backward.
On the other hand, consider the following two sentences, at least one of which might be unpleasant:
- Little Susie ate alligator at the picnic.
- An alligator ate little Susie at the picnic.
Each sentence carries a specific meaning. The first tells us that a child consumed alligator meat at the picnic. (People do eat alligator meat from time to time: I believe I’ve tried it once, but wasn’t impressed enough to try it again.) The second sentence tells us an alligator ate a child at the picnic. The latter sentence is certainly more horrific than the former.
It is the rules of grammar that make clear to us which scenario actually happened. Grammar rules dictate that there must be a precise relationship and positioning between subjects, verbs and objects. If you ignore those rules, you run the risk of conveying something very different than you mean.
It’s not necessarily the order that matters, either. These two sentences mean the same thing, but the first is active voice and the second is passive:
- Little Susie ate alligator at the picnic.
- Alligator meat was eaten by little Susie at the picnic.
Yes, context matters. But so does structure. And the rules of grammar help us understand what is actually being communicated. Breaking rules of grammar can actually miscommunicate something.
I understand both sides of the argument
Yes, the language is always evolving. One of the topics Curzan takes up in the introduction of her book is the word impact. While at a wedding, someone sharing her table learned Curzan was working on a style guide. That person immediately asked about the use of impact as a verb meaning “to affect.” That, Curzan writes, was one the woman’s grammatical pet peeves.
I mind it some. As a copyeditor, there are times I will actually change impacted to affected. I don’t do it every time. But some sentences seem to read better with the latter, older, more familiar word. Curzan writes that she isn’t a fan of the adjective impactful.
But she seems to then say that despite her own dislike for that word, oh, well. Language evolves. So we just have to live with it.
I don’t look at grammar as a way to judge “class.” No two people are going to be the same. But there are certain usages that will always make me cringe, no matter how educated or wealthy a writer or speaker may be.
“I seen the driver take off.” No. You saw the driver take off. I don’t care who says it. In that example, seen is wrong. You could be the richest person on earth and I’m not going to play “wordie” long enough to accept that kind of misuse.
There are some grammatical uses that even well-educated don’t seem to know. The use of due to to mean because of is an example. (Spoiler alert: Due to means “caused by,” not “because of.” If you mean “because of,” write because of.)
In my role as a copyeditor, which is a portion of my real job, I can fix those things. I can have a hand in making sure certain things that the grammando in me hates doesn’t get through. But I’m one person. I can’t control what everyone does, much to the delight of the wordies who don’t seem to be bothered by much of anything.
The wordies among us seem to operate under the assumption that any pushback on grammar changes is automatically bad. The grammandos seem to think pushback — or at least initial resistance — to such changes is automatically good.
For me, I’m going to side slightly to the side of the grammandos but then look at the change and judge that individual change on its on merit. I’m going to look at whether the change makes things clearer. If it does, I might be less likely to complain.
I’m interested in reading Curzan’s stand on grammar when the book arrives. I’m going to assume, in the meantime, that she doesn’t advocate abandoning points of grammar that are necessary to clear communication.
If I’m wrong in that assumption, I might just regret buying it.
