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10 Grammar Rules You Can Forget - How To Stop Worrying and Write Proper - Language - The Guardian
10 Grammar Rules You Can Forget - How To Stop Worrying and Write Proper - Language - The Guardian
Language
‘To go boldly?’ ‘Negative, Captain, it’s fine to split an infinitive.’ Photograph: Cine Text/Sportsphoto
Ltd/Allstar
David Marsh
E
Mon 30 Sep 2013 17.44 BST
This renders the concept of what is "correct" more than a simple matter of
right and wrong. What is correct in a tweet might not be in an essay; no
single register of English is right for every occasion. Updating your status
on Facebook is instinctive for anyone who can read and write to a basic
level; for more formal communication, the conventions are harder to
grasp and this is why so many people fret about the "rules" of grammar.
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Stubbornly to resist splitting infinitives can sound awkward or, worse,
ambiguous: "He offered personally to guarantee the loan that the Clintons
needed to buy their house" makes it unclear whether the offer, or the
guarantee, was personal. Adverbs should go where they sound most
natural, often immediately after the to: to boldly go, to personally
guarantee. This "rule" is not just half-baked: it's fully baked, with a fried
egg and slice of pineapple on top. But remarkably persistent.
In the 17th century, John Dryden, deciding that ending a sentence with a
preposition was "not elegant" because you couldn't do it in Latin, set
about ruining some of his best prose by rewriting it so that "the end he
aimed at" became "the end at which he aimed", and so on. Like not
splitting the infinitive, this became a "rule" when taught by grammarians
influenced by Latin.
Misusing the subjunctive is worse than not using it at all. Many writers
scatter "weres" about as if "was" were – or, indeed, was – going out of
fashion. The journalist Simon Heffer is a fan of the subjunctive,
recommending such usages as "if I be wrong, I shall be defeated". So be it –
if you want to sound like a pirate.
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4 Negative, captain
When Mick Jagger first sang "I can't get no satisfaction", it was not
uncommon to hear the older generation witter on like this: "He says he
can't get no satisfaction, which logically means he can get some
satisfaction."
But while a double negative may make a positive when you multiply
minus three by minus two, language doesn't work in such a logical way:
multiple negatives add emphasis. Literature and music abound with
them. Chaucer used a triple – "He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde" – and
Ian Dury gave us: "Just 'cos I ain't never 'ad, no, nothing worth having,
never ever, never ever."
Not Standard English, it's true, but no native English speaker is likely to
misunderstand, any more than when Jane Austen produced the eloquent
double negative "there was none too poor or remote not to feel an
interest".
5 Between my souvenirs
I was taught that between applies only to two things, and among should
be used for more than two – a rare example of Mrs Birtles, my first
grammar teacher, getting it wrong. Between is appropriate when the
relationship is reciprocal, however many parties are involved: an
agreement between the countries of the EU, for example. Among belongs
to collective relationships, as in votes shared among political parties, or
the items among Paul Whiteman's souvenirs in the 1927 song.
While I am on the subject, it's "between you and me", not "between you
and I". It's probably unfair, though quite good fun, to blame the Queen;
people have heard "my husband and I" and perhaps assume "and I" is
always right. It is when part of the subject ("my husband and I would love
to see you at the palace") but not when part of the object ("the Queen
offered my husband and me cucumber sandwiches").
The tricky bit is when someone tells you about the rule that, as with other
nouns, you have to use a possessive pronoun – "she objected to my
swimming". Most normal people say "she objected to me swimming" so I
wouldn't worry about this. You rarely see the possessive form in
newspapers, for example. Announcing "I trust too much in my team's
being able to string a few wins together" sounds pompous.
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9 None sense
A sure sign of a pedant is that, under the impression that none is an
abbreviation of not one, they will insist on saying things like "none of
them has turned up". Why, when I set out on the road to grammatical
perfection I might even have argued this myself. But the "rule" that none
always takes a singular verb is, alas, another myth. Plural is not only
acceptable, but often sounds more natural: "None of the current squad are
good enough to play in the Championship." Henry Fielding wrote in Tom
Jones: "None are more ignorant than those learned Pedants, whose Lives
have been entirely consumed in Colleges, and among Books."
As Bart Simpson said: "I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try."
Who or whom? The Ghostbusters know which call to make Photograph: Snap/Rex Features
To avoid this, mentally replace who or whom with the third person
pronoun: if you get a subject – he, she, it or they – then who is correct; for
an object – him, her or them – whom is right. In the Greene example it
would be "I think he was an hôtelier" not "I think him was an hôtelier" – so
who, not whom, is correct.
When John Donne wrote "for whom the bell tolls" and Bo Diddley asked
"who do you love?" who was right – Donne or Diddley? The answer is both
of them. It goes back to formal and informal registers. Bo's got a cobra
snake for a necktie. Not the kind of guy, I suggest, who would say
something wussy like "whom do you love?" (It's the same with the
Ghostbusters, whose slogan, you may recall, was not "whom you gonna
call?")
The relaxed tone we prefer these days makes whom increasingly optional,
unlike in Donne's day. The elegant formality of his prose has an eloquence
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and resonance that "for who the bell tolls" lacks. Good title for a book,
though.
3 Nothing compares 2 U
Prince was right; so was Shakespeare ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?). Compare to means liken to; compare with means make a
comparison. So I might compare Lionel Messi with Diego Maradona to
assess their relative merits, then conclude that Messi can be compared to
Maradona – he is a similarly great player. The two phrases have usefully
distinct meanings and, although "compare to" can be replaced by "liken
to", it's clumsier to replace "compare with" with another phrase.
4 A singular problem
"Agreement" or "concord". Yes, more off-putting terms for what is a
straightforward enough rule: be consistent. Gerry Goffin and Carole King,
who composed the Monkees' 1967 hit Pleasant Valley Sunday, wrote: "The
local rock group down the street is tryin' hard to learn their song." It jars.
But wait, I hear you cry. Who says a rock group are singular? There were,
after all, four of them, too busy singing to put anybody down. Quite so. If I
had wandered into the Brill Building in New York and caught Goffin or
King's ear at the time, I would have politely suggested "are tryin' hard to
learn their song" as the answer.
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Collective nouns can be singular or plural. Treat as singular when
the noun is a single unit, but plural when it is more a collection of
individuals, for example: "The family can trace its history back to the
middle ages; the family were sitting down, scratching their heads." Once
you've decided whether the noun is singular or plural, make sure the verb
agrees, or people will conclude you is sloppy.
The sounds of syntax: What pop music can teach us about how
to build a sentence
James Brown: feels good, has a soul. Photograph: Jesse Frohman/Corbis Outline
Wake Up and Make Love With Me – Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Linguists may object to the old definition of verbs as "action" words, but
tell that to Ian Dury.
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I Got You (I Feel Good) – James Brown
Purists might protest that the adjective "good" should be the adverb
"well". Such people have no soul.
There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis – Kirsty
MacColl
The syntax, worthy of a tutorial in phrase-structure grammar, reflects the
fact that while the language is colloquial, the structure is sophisticated.
Bob Dylan: 'Lie Lady Lie' doesn't sound right. Photograph: Jan Persson/Redferns
Commas
Keith Waterhouse advised: "Commas are not condiments. Do not pepper
sentences with them unnecessarily." Quite so, but a well-placed one is the
difference between "what is this thing called love?" and "what is this thing
called, love?" And between "let's eat, Grandma!" and … well, you know the
rest.
Semicolons
You can lead a full and happy life without bothering with semicolons. I
quite like to use one when I feel that something more than a comma, but
less than a full stop, is needed; as here. They are also very handy in lists,
particularly when items consist of several words or contain punctuation
themselves: "His holiday reading comprised Eats, Shoots & Leaves;
Sheffield United FC: the Official Centenary History; and Through the
Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There."
Dashes
A single dash can also add a touch of drama – look! Use sparingly,
however. Some journalists have a tendency to stick a dash in every time
they don't feel like writing a proper sentence – like this. Beware sentences
– such as this one – that dash about all over the place – it makes them look
like a poem by Emily Dickinson.
Exclamation marks
Newspapers are said to employ various synonyms for exclamation marks,
such as bang, shriek, dog's cock or screamer. I must say that, after 40 years
in the business, I have never heard anyone use any of these terms. When a
newspaper employs an exclamation mark in a headline it invariably
means: "Look, we've written something funny!"
This is an edited extract from For Who the Bell Tolls: One Man's Quest for
Grammatical Perfection, by David Marsh, published by Guardian Faber on 3
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October. To order a copy for £8.99 (RRP £12.99) visit
theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.
Speaking proper: does it Battle on the adverbials Train ticket machines need
matter if we can't front: grammar advisers to use clearer language,
pronounce raise worries about Sats study finds
mispronunciation? tests and teaching
11 Mar 2014 … 9 May 2017 … 2 Jun 2016 …
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