Hopefully nobody has forgotten that it뭩 National Grammar Day

fishwax

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Thu Mar-04-10 07:02 PM
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Hopefully nobody has forgotten that it뭩 National Grammar Day

Just about every person has their own pet grammar peeve. Some like to gleefully scold others for grammar mistakes, as though an occasional bit of informal English were simply too much for civilized society to put up with. Some see changes in the language as evidence that the very fabric of society is raveling, but irregardless, the language continues to evolve.

As it turns out, many common grammar mistakes aren뭪 actually mistakes at all, but rather perfectly natural and understandable adaptations of the language. And often, in spite of protests by amateur and professional grammarians, they have decades or even centuries of history supporting them. So, in celebration of National Grammar Day, I wanted to offer a brief list of common grammar mistakes that aren뭪 really mistakes.

Number One: 밐opefully� is perfectly acceptable as a sentence adverb.
Admittedly, my subject line is likely to raise the hackles of those who insist that hopefully should only mean 밿n a hopeful manner.� Frankly, though, 밾opefully� has been used for more than 70 years and there is no reasonable objection against it. Fortunately, it is a useful word뾪uch easier than alternatives such as 밿t is to be hoped that.� Thankfully, it is very likely to be misunderstood in most cases.

Honestly, the fact of the matter is that we use all kinds of sentence adverbs in English (such as 밶dmittedly,� 밼rankly,� 밼ortunately,� 뱓hankfully,� and 밾onestly�). But while a sentence like "Thankfully it isn't raining" wouldn't raise any objections, "hopefully it isn't raining" does.

Number Two: It뭩 fine to use 뱓heir� and 뱓hey� as gender-neutral singular pronouns.
It뭩 nothing new � in fact, this usage dates back to the 14th century. It뭩 certainly easier to use and more elegant than 밾is or her� or 밾is/her� or 뱒/he,� and if used with care there is very little chance of misunderstanding.

Considering that most of our greatest writers (from Chaucer and Shakespeare on down the line) have used singular they/their, and since people have been using it this way longer than Modern English has even been around, it뭩 interesting that objections to this usage have only been around (as far as I can tell) for the last few decades뾞s its use has become associated specifically with a desire for a gender-neutral pronoun.

Number Three: Feel free to boldly split infinitives.
Sometimes, it뭩 true, splitting your idea is a bad idea for stylistic reasons, and of course it뭩 possible that a split infinitive can create confusion. However, there is no real 뱑ule� against it, nor is there any logical reason that infinitives ought not be split. And, further, sometimes splitting the infinitive can reduce confusion.

Split infinitives were common in Middle English, but died off in Early Modern English. They were rarely used by the likes of Shakespeare, Dryden, et al, but there was no prohibition against them, even then. They were just considered inelegant. Until the late 19th century, when usage of the split infinitive became more common, and then the grammatical-powers-that-be began to rally against them.

Number Four: Don뭪 trust Robert Lowth when it comes to preposition placement.
Robert Lowth wrote the first important book about English grammar, and many of the rules he claimed back in 1762 are still referred to today. Unfortunately, one such rule is that absurdity about how a preposition is something you shouldn뭪 end your sentence with. Aside from finding the construction inelegant, his reasoning was based on his understanding of a Latin rule that he believed prohibited such constructions. In fact, there is no such prohibition in Latin뾞nd even if there were, there would be no reason to apply such a rule to English, since English is not a Latin language.

What뭩 more, while there are some constructions in which avoiding a sentence-ending preposition might be stylistically pleasing, there are all kinds of situations in which avoiding that construction requires absurd acts of linguistic contortion. So feel free to use prepositions wherever you want, provided your meaning is clear.

Number Five: 밒rregardless� is a word.
Don뭪 get me wrong뾋 wouldn뭪 use irregardless in formal writing, but I still find the hysteria about this word entertaining. The basic objection is that 밿rregardless� is illogical because it means the same thing as 뱑egardless,� even though the prefix 밿r-� is supposed to be a negation. But irregardless isn뭪 unique in this regard: inflammable means the same thing as flammable, for instance, and boning a fish is no different from deboning a fish. In both cases, a negative prefix is attached without changing the meaning of the word. An even weirder example is 뱔nravel.� In spite of the negative 뱔n-,� unravel means the same thing as ravel. But what뭩 weirder is that if you look up 뱑avel� in most dictionaries, they actually include 뱔nravel� in their first definition. An alternate definition is 뱓o tangle or complicate,� so the word ravel contains both a specific action and its opposite.

What뭩 more, it뭩 not the case that 밿r-� is always and only a negation. Like most of our negative prefixes, 밿r-� is also an intensifier, and that is consistent with how people tend to use 밿rregardless뵕to emphasize just how regardless it is.

Number Six: It뭩 okay to use 뱇ess� with countable nouns.
I know that the �10 items or less� signs in the speed lane at the supermarket piss some people off, because (the theory goes) one is supposed to use 밼ewer� for countable nouns and 뱇ess than� for uncountables.

But this is not actually a hard and fast rule. Oddly enough, while 뱇ess� sounds odd with countable nouns (뱇ess bananas,� 뱇ess books�), it sounds perfectly natural when those countable nouns are actually counted (뱇ess than five bananas,� 뱇ess than twenty books�). This is most evident when talking about money or time, as even the most rigid of presiptivists wouldn뭪 likely object to a sentence like 밒 have less than twenty bucks in cash right now� or 밒 have less than 30 minutes to get this paper done.�

So a phrase like �12 items or less (than 12 items)� actually makes sense.

Anyway, there are more such alleged-mistakes that I could include on this list, but in the interest of brevity I wanted to keep the list to six items or less. :)