Monday, October 23, 2017

I'm not a grammar Nazi. Really, I'm not!

Nowadays people are wont to state that they speak or dress or act in a way to express their own unique personalities. Who am I to question that? I'll tell you who I am--I'm a cranky, middle-aged man with an education and too much free time!

In speaking and writing, common usage becomes popular usage, and popular expressions of yesteryear (such as "is wont to") are forgotten. Grammar is a descriptive study, not prescriptive. There is no right or wrong in grammar, no matter how stupid someone sounds. This is not, however, license for a linguistic free-for-all. While grammar may not be prescriptive, style is. One doesn't write a cover letter in the same way one would write a Facebook post. One doesn't write a notice to building residents in the same way as a letter to one's grandmother. (If people still write letters to their grandmothers.)

I won't go into style too much, because I'm really more eager to list the language errors that make me crazy:
  • "No pun intended." More often than not, no pun has occurred. Wikipedia defines a pun as "...a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect." The most common form of pun is when a word could be confused with another with the same pronunciation, or a homophone. Examples include the title of the old music hall song, "She sits among the cabbages and peas," and the quote attributed to George Carlin, "Atheism is a non-prophet institution." Other forms of word play are not puns! (This is closely related to the misuse of the word "acronym") 
  • Dangling participles. They're not so much annoying as amusing, because one finds them in the speech and writing of some very highly educated people. By definition, a dangling participle is a verb form (a participle) used as a modifier, where the word order or sentence structure leaves doubt about who or what is being modified. A simple example is, "Hiding beneath the table, the boy found the cat." Was the boy or the cat hiding beneath the table?  
  • "It just so happens"  "So" is a pronoun, meaning it stands in for another word or phrase. "So" usually stands in for a condition or occurrence in sentences like this. In this case, if the occurrence or condition has not been mentioned previously, the correct usage would be, "It [just] happens that [condition or occurrence]," or a simple statement of the condition or occurrence. Mention of the condition or occurrence might sometimes have an element of longing to it, such as, "I really wish that [condition or occurrence]." In this case, one might say, "Well, it just so happens!"
  • "They" or "their" for third person singular. Yes, I know Shakespeare did it, and I know there's no escaping it, but I avoid it like the plague. Politically and socially I am a feminist, but linguistically I long for the old days, when people were OK with the use of "he" when the sex of the person discussed was unknown.  (This also brings up the use of "sex" or "gender"--they're not synonyms, people!  Use your dictionaries!)
  • Misuse of commas. I wrote once about appositives, but apparently I wasn't very convincing, because people are still making errors, e.g., "Blogger, Taminophile to speak at the United Nations"
    • Rule no. 1: If the second word or phrase, known as the appositive, is necessary for the sentence to have meaning, you don't need commas. If the sentence stands alone without it just fine, you do.  
    • Rule no. 2: I can not stress this enough-- Regardless of whether you heed Rule no. 1, if you use a comma before the second word or phrase, use a comma after it.
Consider the headline mentioned above: "Blogger, Taminophile to speak at the United Nations".  "Taminophile" modifies "blogger", and is necessary for the meaning of the sentence to be clear: "Blogger to speak at the United Nations!" does not carry the same meaning. If the meaning is not completely clear without the second word, then you don't need commas.  The correct headline would be, "Blogger Taminophile to speak at the United Nations".
However, in the sentence, "Taminophile, local blogger, to speak at the United Nations" the sentence would make complete sense if either "Taminophile" or "local blogger" were removed:  "Local blogger to speak at the United Nations" makes sense. If the meaning is clear without the second word, then you do need commas.  
There are other, more simple errors like using quotes or upper-case letters for emphasis, the obvious "there/they're/their" and "to/too", and other such mistakes. But I've already made my point. I don't expect the world to be a better place if you take my linguistic advice, but it might be a less harsh for sensitive types like me.

Addendum:
Forever.  A totally superfluous adverb in most cases.  "His life was changed forever."  As opposed to changed temporarily? The very nature of the verb "to change" implies some permanence unless a modifier contradicts that. Unless you're singing Handel choruses, you could easily live your life without using "forever" and not see a noticeable difference. You could give it up forever.