Grammar and Spelling

 A conversation erupted on Facebook a few weeks ago about the importance of proper grammar and spelling. Opinions were all over the place. Some people were rigid for proper grammar and precise spelling. Others believed that, so long as the reader understood what you meant, anything goes.

I was busy at the time and unable to participate, though I have thoughts. (Surprise, surprise.) Here you go.

Regarding grammar, the entire field has become a refuge for pedants who would use strict interpretations as a crutch and demand everyone else do so. That’s bullshit.

I recently read Bill Bryson’s delightful history of the English language, The Mother Tongue; now I periodically dip into its companion Made in America, which shows how the language changed on this side of the sheugh. There are large chunks of “proper” grammar that come from a book by an English minister who appointed himself the Royal High Arbiter of English Grammar and pretty much decided what grammar should be. There were no definitive guides at the time – which makes sense, as there was no universally agree-on grammar either – people adopted his “rules” wholesale and we’re still hamstrung by them.

The purpose of grammar and punctuation is to make the writing clear to the reader, not to follow arbitrary rules. Placing the rules ahead of the purpose often serves to obfuscate the meaning, and that is something up with which I shall not put. (Thank you, Winston Churchill.) Last year I read Basil H. Liddell-Hart’s renowned history of the Second World War. It has a wealth of information, but the precise English public school grammar makes some sentences almost impossible to navigate; I sometimes forgot how a sentence began by the time it completed its Byzantine meandering to the end. You must give the reader a fighting chance to discern your meaning (Thank you Strunk & White), but grammar should always be the servant, not the master.

Spelling is different. Bad spelling forces the reader to divine the meaning of each cluster of letters. This not only slows things down, it violates Strunk and White’s “fighting chance” rule. Even the excuse, “This is how it should be spelled” is faulty, as readers from different parts of the country may perceive even a purely phonetic spelling differently.

Few people hand write things for others to read anymore. Keyboards and voice recognition reign. This means spell check is almost always available. If you can’t take the time to send your message through at least a rudimentary spell check, why would I think you spent any more time than that thinking about it, so why should I read it? (very brief social media and text responses are obviously not included, though you should still show some consideration for the poor bugger on the receiving end.)

Here’s the thing with grammar, spelling, and life in general: be sensitive of the intended audience. If you want them to read what you sent, make it easy for them. Think how you’d feel if someone forced you to trudge through turgid grammar and misspelled words in hope of figuring what they want to tell you and use your judgment accordingly.

Stylesheets

 

A few weeks ago we talked about grammar. (Well, I did. No one else had much to say.) That was supposed to include a discussion of stylesheets, but the grammar post was plenty long, so here we are today.

 

Stylesheets are fine, in their place. Newspapers or magazines need consistency, lest they look, and read, as if assembled by the proverbial thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. I have a stylesheet of sorts for this blog to remind myself to enforce certain things I feel strongly about. (Oxford commas, for example. I acknowledge there are two schools of thought: those who use Oxford commas to provide clarity and flow to the writing; and those who are wrong.) It’s also my blog, so no one else’s opinion really matters.

 

Strict adherence to a stylesheet bothers me when publishers insist on one for all books. I have been fortunate that Down & Out Books isn’t hardcore about this, though I have had discussions with editors because I insist on something that doesn’t agree with the stylesheet they prefer. I understand, and agree, the book needs to be consistent throughout, but it is pedantic beyond description to think anyone cares that one author used Oxford commas and another from the same publisher was wrong.

 

I use punctuation similar to musical notation, especially in dialog. I’m trying to convey to the reader where the speaker hurried on or paused, and how long the pause is. This means I may use a period, comma, dash, or ellipsis in non-traditional manners that may not be welcome to a grammarian. I don’t want to have to argue about what the stylesheet says should go there. Paraphrasing Raymond Chandler, when I use an ellipsis/comma/period, God damn it, it is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive.

 

Grammar, of which punctuation is part, evolves, as even a quick reading of Lynne Truss’s delightful book Eats Shoots and Leaves will show. Too rigid an adherence to stylesheets will only stifle the inevitable changes. To pick a point in time when grammar was “correct” or “proper” is to deny the history of the topic about which such pedants claim to know so much. (There’s an example of classically proper grammar actually making the sentence harder to understand.) I’ll admit, the misuse of “less” when “fewer” is appropriate affects me as fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. That doesn’t mean I should be a bigot about it. (In my defense, “less” implies an analog, thus less specific, measurement; “fewer” is more digital.)

 

Do stylesheets serve a purpose? Absolutely. In their place. And that place need never be too broadly construed.