I’m a bit of a language nerd. While other people may be like, “Is it ‘laying on the bed’ or ‘lying on the bed’? Ah, eff it,” I’m like intransitive verb! Let me explain!*
I try to keep this part of me a little dormant because I really don’t want to come across as a grammar snob and I know people can be sensitive to correction. I’m hardly flawless myself. I make mistakes on this blog all the time and truly appreciate people letting me know. I know it comes from a “Hey, just trying to help” place.
So anyway, some thoughts on grammar correction:
Non-Native Speakers
As a rule, I don’t correct people whose English isn’t native unless they’ve specifically asked me to do so. When I was studying abroad, people always asked me to correct their English (as they corrected my French) and I’m more than happy to oblige.
If the point of language is communication – which I believe it is – I’m not going to be all “don’t end a sentence with a preposition!” In fact, I’m unlikely to tell anyone not to end a sentence with a preposition because I think that rule is stupid (and more of a guideline than a rule, really).
Spoken vs Written
I see more grammar issues in written language, but I suppose there’s a reason for that. If you are speaking we don’t really know if you just mixed “your” and “you’re” whereas in print this is glaring.
We also have to acknowledge that grammar has styles. While other people live and die by the AP Style Guide, they can pry my Oxford commas from my cold, dead keyboard. Also, I was writing “website” long before they said it was OK because, really? Web site? No.
Our quibbles notwithstanding, I understand and appreciate grammar guidelines. I recognize the need for, say, a newspaper to uniformly decide how they are going to address common language issues.
Do you correct grammar? Does it irritate you when you are corrected? Discuss!
*It’s most likely lying on the bed. Unless you are, you know, laying on the bed. Like in a wink, wink way.
renita says
you knew I was going to comment.
I try really hard not to correct people unless they ask for it. I do occasionally correct Matthew or close friends because they don’t tend to take it badly 🙂
It slips out sometimes, and sometimes people ask, so I get into it.
I have no problem with website but I do refuse to change from e-mail (even though AP style is now email… ergh).
In short, this xkcd panel sums me up pretty well: http://xkcd.com/386/
renita says
hahaha 🙂
I also try to gently help people if I see they might be about to embarrass themselves … although given the state of the English language it’s probably less embarrassing than I think.
renita says
you knew I was going to comment.
I try really hard not to correct people unless they ask for it. I do occasionally correct Matthew or close friends because they don’t tend to take it badly 🙂
It slips out sometimes, and sometimes people ask, so I get into it.
I have no problem with website but I do refuse to change from e-mail (even though AP style is now email… ergh).
In short, this xkcd panel sums me up pretty well: http://xkcd.com/386/
Rachael says
Oxford comma for life! I’m an editor and after I was hired the first thing I looked up in our Style Manual was the Oxford comma, and I discovered with dismay that our standard is to leave it as the client has written it. It pains me to leave it out.
Helena says
Oxford Comma Team!
Sarah Cooley says
For such an avid reader and writer I cannot break Drew ( she’s 7) of the “I gots” instead of “I have” ..small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. She’ll get it. I will honestly admit as a former English teacher, I did not like teaching grammar…not even one little bit. Necessary, absolutely, fun, I tried. I really did. Many, many former colleagues would ask me to proofread memos, papers, letters, etc. and oh how I loved to do that! One rule, if you don’t want honest feedback, don’t ask. I’ve seen some doozies in my day that I am glad I got my grammatical hands on before they were ever sent out!
Helena says
Oh, I used to edit things in my old job and there seems to be a divide… people who know SO MUCH about accounting know SO LITTLE about sentence structure…
Hemborgwife says
This is a slight bone of contention in our house dealing with a native and non-native speaker! My husband, Swedish first language, had a hard time with people having different speaking grammar versus what he had learned in school. Now four years on he has relaxed a bit but now I am starting to intermingle Swedish and English grammar rules which is not good!
Michael B says
Commenting on your blog posts has become really tempting for me lately!
I’m sure I’m going to be the minority on this when I say notions of “grammar” and correctness should be rejected (I use scare quotes, because stylistic “grammar” and prescriptive “grammar” are very different from linguistic grammar). I would go on to say that the only time we should be correcting grammar is when we are teaching ESL to non-native speakers of English so that they may more effectively communicate in English.
The main issue is that “grammar” and grammar are often confounded, when in reality they rarely interact. For example, ending sentences with prepositions is totally fine in English! Lots of languages do it (It’s called ‘p-stranding’ if you’re curious), but interestingly, Romance languages do not have p-stranding. During the revival of “grammar”, people really wanted to be like French and Italian, so we started coming up with crazy rules like not ending sentences with prepositions, which is pretty hard to do considering English has like 150 phrasal verbs (cf. “Where is the light I need to turn on” would sound strange if we couldn’t end that question with ‘on’).
Split infinitives is another no-no I was taught in high school, but it turns out that this is also totally fine in English and other languages whose non-inflected verb form consists of two words. Again, French and Italian don’t have split infinitives (since they are only one word and neither language has infixes) so we just decided that was close enough. The point is that none of these ‘rules’ are motivated linguistically–they just kind of arbitrarily exist and have weak origins.
Now, of course, style is something totally different. That’s really where things like “grammar” and correctness come into play. I learned AP style and think of style manuals as an extension of text and print design, rather than (linguistic) grammar. They, along with spelling, standardize language so that the lack of one-to-one written versus spoken language correspondance is managed more easily (I won’t get into la RAE in Spain or l’Acadamie Francaise but I’m sure you can guess my opinion of them!). However, they should not be extended to language. They are just a particular way to design language.
So…uh…end sentences with prepositions! It’s totally cool now!
Michael B says
People come up with weird rules all the time, and there was a huge push to be more like French back in the day!
And yes, a part of Midwest English is vacuous p-stranding in invitations such as “Are you coming with?”. Some people analyze it as NP ellipsis (you drop the ‘me’; cf. “Are you coming with [me]?”), but yes, it probably comes from German, which allows ‘Are you coming with’ and similar constructions.
Are you sure you don’t want to be a linguist?
Helena says
Wow, I love learning about how other languages impact English. It may be just a myth, but I’ve heard that people in the Midwest are more prone to say “are you coming with?” rather than “are you coming?” or “are you coming with me?” (something I noticed when I moved here) because many of the first immigrants here were German and that sentence structure works in German.
The split infinitive thing is so interesting! I always thought that was odd. I mean, “to boldly go where no man has gone before” – how could you say that any better?
Helena says
Ha, one of the friends I made while in France would correct my English even though his wasn’t native (this is NOT to say that someone whose English isn’t native couldn’t be better at English than I am… odds are they’ve had more grammar classes than I have!) but he was wrong most of the time and it was awkward. So I’d say something, and he’d correct it into something odd…
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