The dispute between prescriptivism and descriptivism has sometimes been described as “a war that never ends.” Indeed, it often seems that the two sides are locked in an eternal struggle at polar opposites of the debate, neither willing to yield an inch. The prescriptivists are striving to uphold time-honored standards and defend the language from decay; the descriptivists are trying to overthrow the system and allow linguistic chaos to rein in its place.

But is that really a true picture of the situation?

I have met one or two descriptivists who felt that any English sentence produced by a native speaker should be considered perfectly correct. I’ve also edited enough writing to firmly disagree with that notion. But by and large, the descriptivists I’ve known have not been the anything-goes types that the prescriptivists often make them out to be. They may oppose the grammar nazis, but they are not grammar anarchists or grammar free-love hippies; they’re more along the lines of grammar democrats, in my opinion.

If the argument over grammatical standards really is a war that never ends, as Mark Halpern says, then perhaps the primary impetus that keeps it going is the fact that it is such a poorly defined conflict. Both sides have misrepresented the other, though from my perspective it seems that it is the descriptivists who are most misunderstood.

And though both sides will often make more moderate, conciliatory statements like “Well, of course there should be some sort of standard” or “Well, of course language changes and the rules need to change with it,” I’ve never seen editors and linguists sit down together and figure out just how much they really agree on. I think there are many instances where a prescriptivist might say, “English should be x,” and a descriptivist would say, “English is x” ; that is, they’re agreeing on an aspect of the language, even if they’re approaching it from different angles.

The debate, of course, arises from those areas in which the descriptivist says, “English is x,” and the prescriptivist says, “Yeah, but it should be y.” But I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer when I’ve asked, “But why should it be y?” And this, I think, is where prescriptivism goes astray.

Mark Halpern says, “Arbitrary laws—conventions—are just the ones that need enforcement, not the natural laws. The law of gravity can take care of itself; the law that you go on green and stop on red needs all the help it can get.” Reading this, I can’t help but wonder what sorts of linguistic car accidents or traffic jams would occur if we abandoned all of our arbitrary prescriptions. Does language really need our help, or can it take care of itself, too?

If language does need help—and I think that in areas like spelling and punctuation, it clearly does—how much does it need? How much does the strict separation between less and fewer contribute to the laudable goal of a standard form of the language? What about the proscription against they as an indefinite singular pronoun?

How often do prescriptivist rules really help anyone, and how often do they simply cultivate an air of disdain for those who don’t follow the rules? Mark Halpern says that nobody cares about split infinitives or ain’t anymore, but this is far from the truth. I’ve known too many editors and language buffs, read too many internet discussions about linguistic pet peeves to believe that.

Far too often, prescriptions serve not to facilitate the smooth and orderly flow of traffic but to impose regulations on a system that got by just fine for centuries without them. And far too often, prescriptivism serves only to create a class of self-appointed grammar police and to make those who can’t remember the arbitrary conventions self-conscious and insecure about their language.

The truth is this: as long as prescriptivism reigns, there will be an awful lot of arrant pedants in the world. And as long as descriptivists are falling down on the job of education society about language, prescriptivists will never understand that change is not degeneration and that freedom is not anarchy.

Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge and spun off the English blog from the rest of my site. Hopefully this will give me more motivation to write new posts here. Maybe I’ll get really crazy and add some other stuff, too, like the FAQ and style guide that I’ve always dreamed about.

But for now I’m just worried about ironing out the kinks in my new skin. I’m pretty pleased with it so far, especially since it’s basically the product of one day’s work.

I apologize to all those who will have to unsubscribe from the old blog and subscribe to this one instead, but the old installation was messy—I was running two blogs on one installation thanks to a plug-in called Multiply. I thought it would be nice to have everything on one installation, but it caused a lot of other complications (like the inadvertent death of the Arts & Letters blog). So hopefully the move will have a few different advantages.

I was on hold just now, listening to the prerecorded voice tell me every thirty seconds that my call would be answered in the order it was received, and I wondered what the heck was going on in the grammar of that sentence. In colloquial English, there would be an “in” at the end, and in formal English, it would be “in the order in which it was received.” But instead the preposition was just missing.

What’s going on here? My instinct is that the speaker (or author of the line) is uncomfortable with that stranded preposition, but the traditionally correct alternative sounds so stuffy and wordy as to be unacceptable. Instead the preposition quietly disappears, like when children hide their vegetables or feed them to the dog instead of choosing between the unacceptable alternatives of either eating them or leaving them on the plate.

Unfortunately there’s not really a way to test this hypothesis. After all, when a word is missing, it doesn’t exactly leave an indication of where it went or why it went there, and most people are so unaware of their own linguistic impulses that you could never get a reliable response by asking people. Plus, I’ve found that most people don’t really like being cornered by linguists and interrogated about their missing words. I can’t imagine why.

Those who have worked with me before may remember that I was once nicknamed “The Index to The Chicago Manual of Style” (or just “The Index” for short) because I always knew where to find everything that anyone needed to look up. I’ve always been a fan of the big orange book. It is so painstakingly thorough, so comprehensive, so detailed—what’s not to like? But I must admit that I was rather disappointed with the new chapter on grammar and usage in the fifteenth edition.

In theory it sounded like a great addition. However, when I recieved my copy and started flipping through it, I quickly realized that the new chapter was marginally helpful at best and outright incorrect at worst, though most of it settled comfortably on the middle ground of merely useless.

One passage in particular caught my attention and just about made my eyes bug out when I read it. For those of you who would like to follow along at home, it’s section 5.113:

Progressive conjugation and voice. If an inflected form of to be is joined with the verb’s present participle, a progressive conjugation is produced {the ox is pulling the cart}. The progressive conjugation is in active voice because the subject is performing the action, not being acted on.

Anyone who knows their grammar should know that a construction can be both progressive and passive; the two are not mutually exclusive. And anyone who knows how to spot a passive construction should realize that the section illustrates how wrong it is with the last three words, “being acted on.”

You see, while it is not technically a passive, but rather a pseudo-passive*, it shows that you can take an inflected form of be, in this case “is,” followed by a present participle, “being,” followed by a past participle, “acted.” Voila! You have a passive progressive. I wrote the Chicago staff a nice e-mail saying that maybe I had misunderstood, but it seemed to me that there was a contradiction here. Here’s what they wrote back:

Yes, I think perhaps you are misunderstanding the point here. Section 5.113 seeks to prevent an inaccurate extension of 5.112, which states that “the passive voice is always formed by joining an inflected form of to be (or, in colloquial usage, to get) with the verb’s past participle.” In 5.113, CMS points out that phrases like “the subject is not being acted on,” which might look passive, are actually constructed with a present participle, rather than a past participle, and are active in voice. (Note that the subject—the word “subject”—is performing the action of not being; this is active, not passive.)

Thank you for writing

–Staff

So not only does the anonymous staff member confuse syntax and semantics, but they aren’t even bothering to analyze the verb phrase as a whole. I wrote back to explain myself in more detail. I even cited a web page from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. Notice the second example. Here’s their response:

Well, I’ve done my best to defend Mr. Garner’s take on the subject, but I’ll be happy to add your letter to our file of suggested corrections and additions to CMS. If you wish to explore this question further, you might take the matter up with experts at grammar Web sites and help pages. Meanwhile, please write us again if you have a question about Chicago style. –Staff

Apparently the creators of the Purdue University Online Writing Lab don’t count as experts at a grammar Web site. The sad thing is that there are a lot of editors in the world like this anonymous staffer, completely lacking the analytic tools and grammatical knowledge necessary to identify such problems and make such arguments. A good editor should know that Bryan Garner’s take on the subject is misleading and incorrect. It’s become apparent to me that many of the self-appointed guardians of the language don’t even know what it is they’re guarding.

————

*I’d like to thank Geoffrey Pullum for pointing out this distinction. The construction in the end of the quoted section is not a true passive because the verb is technically intransitive; it only seems to be transitive because of the stranded preposition. Notice that the “active” form (which is not actually active according to some definitions), “the subject is acting,” is intransitive and contains no preposition, stranded or otherwise.

The genesis of this post goes traces back several months. I was reading Language Log, notably some posts by Geoffrey Pullum on the passive voice, and felt inspired to write to him. He pointed out that he had already written about the issue, but he said that he was so surprised by the staffer’s response that he would write about it on Language Log and appoint me an honorary deputy. Sadly, he never got around to writing that post, but I was recently reading Far from the Madding Gerund and was reminded of the whole thing, so I decided to write about it myself.

When you study and work with language for a living, a lot of people naturally assume that you’re some sort of scowling, finger-wagging pedant who is secretly keeping a list of all the grammatical and usage errors they make. It’s difficult to make people understand that you only correct errors when you’re on the clock, and even then you sometimes do it grudgingly because that’s what the style guide says, not necessarily because you believe you’re actually improving the text. It’s even harder to make people understand that what you’re really interested in is understanding how language works, not telling people that they’re using the language wrong or that they’re somehow lacking or inferior because they split an infinitive and dangled a participle.

The problem is that too many people have had bad experiences with just such language pedants, the Miss Thistlebottoms of the world. Now, I have to say that I do believe that there should be standards in the language and that they should be taught to students and followed by writers and editors (when appropriate).

The problem is that the standards in English are too often defined or enforced by people who apparently pull rules out of thin air. These grammatical fussbudgets aren’t interested in a standard based on the usage of educated speakers and writers; rather, they seem to prefer rules that set them apart from the unwashed masses, that give them a reason to judge and condemn. The Elements of Style is their bible, Strunk and White are their prophets, and they sneer down their noses at those not of their faith. The objective, empirical truth of English usage is of no interest to them; they have faith in their false gospel of grammar.

Why do these grammar nazis bother me so? For a lot of reasons, actually. First of all, because a lot of people assume that I’m one of them, and that is simply not true. I was never much of a grammar nazi even when I was new to the field of editing; I favored the spirit of the law over the letter of the law. I still enjoy editing, and I have some very good friends who are excellent editors, but too many people in that profession are either incompetent or tyrannical (or likely both).

Second, I have a strong respect for the truth. Most grammaristos will believe whatever falsehoods they happened to hear in their English classes. If an English teacher tells them that it’s always wrong to split an infinitive, to strand a preposition, or to use they with a singular antecedent, they will unquestioningly accept it as gospel truth, no matter how nonsensical it may be. Any rational person could do a little research and find all three of those “rules” broken by virtually all the finest English writers of the last several centuries. You’d think this would be enough to convince them that such rules are faulty, but the grammar pedants will usually respond with a retort like “Just because Shakespeare made mistakes doesn’t make it alright.” You simply can’t argue with people like that.

And as if those rules weren’t ridiculous enough, there are teachers in the world who tell their students that it’s outright wrong to use the final serial comma or to use the subordinator that when it could be omitted. These sorts of rules only serve to teach students that English is a difficult, frustrating subject that doesn’t make sense. These students then spend the rest of their lives fearing anyone in a position of grammatical authority and believing that many of their natural tendencies in the language are probably wrong.

When people are blindly stupid about grammar and usage, it makes me angry, but when people have been cowed into believing that no matter what they do, they’re always going to get it wrong, it just makes me sad. There’s something seriously wrong with the way English grammar is taught today. At some point the system was taken over by people who favored literary analysis over any sort of teaching of the principles of the language, so what little grammar is being taught is fundamentally flawed because no one has taken the time to learn it properly before they attempt to teach it to others. It’s a subject that’s been highly abused, and too often it’s used for abusive purposes.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what the solution is. I may not be a grammar nazi, but neither am I a grammar anarchist. All I know is that I don’t like the way things are, and I think it’s time for a change.

I am not an English major. It’s true that I used to be—I’m not disputing that. But I’m not anymore, even though my new major doesn’t really sound different. I’m an English language major. There’s a subtle yet profound difference there. Some keen and discerning people recognize that there’s a difference, but even then they don’t always catch on to what it is. I’m not learning English as a second language—I already speak it fluently, thanks. Nor am I learning how to teach English as a second language—if that’s what I wanted to do, I’d get a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) minor.

So what exactly is my major? Well, like the name says, I study the English language. Not its literature, but the actual language itself—cool stuff like grammar and usage and phonology and semantics and the history of the language. I can tell you everything about the Great Vowel Shift and what separates Old English from Modern English (for starters, Shakespeare is not Old English).

Why am I so frustrated that I have to explain all of this? It’s because people often ask my wife and me what our majors are (hers is English), and they almost invariably respond, “Oh, so you’re both English majors.” Well, no, not really. Our majors have exactly one required class in common. It’s true that we’re both editors and devout word nerds, but our fields of study are quite different. The English major focuses on literature and writing, whereas the English language major focuses on linguistics.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. This is all thoroughly fascinating, but what’s the point? Isn’t this just another one of those fluffy humanities majors that don’t prepare you for the real world? What in the world do you actually do with a degree in English language, anyway? Flip burgers? I certainly hope not. Go on to law school? Ugh. No way. Teach high school? Not a chance. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve got tons of respect for teachers, but I decided a long time ago that teaching wasn’t for me, and I’ve gotten tired of people asking, “So, are you going to be a teacher?” It was an annoying question when I was still an English major (and thus had more of a chance of teaching high school), but it’s a far more annoying question now that I’m an English language major (and thus have zero chance of teaching high school). They want someone to teach literature and writing and that sort of thing, not someone who can explain to students the difference between a punctual and a durative verb or the phonological and grammatical changes that separate the Germanic languages from the rest of the Indo-European language family.

Instead, I am going into the wonderful world of editing. Not just proofreading or typo-fixing: editing. I fix things like bad organization, grammatical errors, poor wording, and stylistic issues. I am the mechanic that fixes those funny squeals and clunks and keeps things running smoothly. I am the midwife that makes sure the words are delivered without any problems. I am the security guard that pats down suspicious-looking sentences and confiscates their contraband grammar. I am the janitor that cleans up authors’ messes, messes that they’re perfectly capable of cleaning up themselves, but they don’t bother because they know I’ll take care of it. I am the guy you complain about and gloat over in absentia every time you find the typo that slipped through. I am the guy who will likely never get his name on a book cover, no matter how much he works on that book.

That last thought depresses me sometimes. I might never be published. I might never see my name in print. I might never write anything that will be of value to anyone but me. But is that so bad? Do I have to be a writer to be valued? Is it true that those who can’t write, edit? I really don’t think so. I like what I do. I’m good at it. And if no one ever quite understands just what it is I do, I should take it as a compliment, for that is the curse of the editor: when we do our jobs well, no one even knows we are there.

I have always felt that English is a good language. I’m probably fairly biased when it comes to this subject, but I don’t care. English is a colorful and versatile language that readily accepts new borrowings, coinages, and idioms. Its grammar is simple and its vocabulary is broad. It’s also the most influential and widely spoken language in the world at the moment.

So why are we still so infatuated with Latin?

It’s not that I hate Latin; unlike some people, I don’t know it well enough to hate it. But I do know enough to know that Latin has been one of the greatest blessings and worst curses that the English language has ever seen. As you probably know, Latin was the language of scholarship for many years. This led to a huge influx of new words that greatly expanded English vocabulary. Unfortunately, Latin’s great prestige made English look backwards and barbaric by comparison.

The beauty of Latin was in its well-established rules. English—and any other language—was a mess of dialects and differing usages and pronunciations. Of course, the only reason Latin’s rules were so well-established is that it was long dead and fossilized by that time. There were no Latin dialects anymore because those dialects had evolved into full-fledged languages.

The result of this is that Latin rules were often imposed on English by grammarians seeking to turn English into a more enlightened tongue. The worst of these was Bishop Lowth, who took it upon himself to create an English pedagogical grammar textbook. Nearly two hundred fifty years later, we are still stuck with some of his infamous rules, including the prohibitions against split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions—rules that were based on Latin grammar. Ironically, in his own words, he opposed “forcing the English under the rules of a foreign language.”¹

The damage done by Latin didn’t end there. Latin words may have enriched English vocabulary, but many of these borrowings were duplicates of English words. The Latin (and French) borrowings took on an elevated status, while the English doublets became cruder by comparison. Consider the following pairs: kingly and regal, house and mansion, heavenly and celestial, get and obtain. The first word in each pair is English, while the second is Latin or French. In each case the Latinate word is loftier. But why? Is Latin intrinsically better? Absolutely not. The Romans may have built an advanced empire, but it was not because their language was any better than the languages of the Gauls or Iberians or Germanic tribes.

More than fifteen hundred years after the fall of Rome, we still consider Romance languages to be beautiful and Germanic languages to be ugly. I say that anyone who believes this has never heard passages of Beowulf read aloud in authentic Old English. The Anglo-Saxons knew how to do things right; when translating from Latin, if they encountered a word that didn’t have an English equivalent, they made one up from English roots. And why shouldn’t they? English was just as legitimate a language as Latin, a language of poetry and scholarship.

I think that in many ways, we’ve forgotten and abandoned the roots of our language. Millions of people still study Latin, but how many study Old English? How many people think that got is just as good as obtained? The sad thing is, most people probably don’t even realize that they’re neglecting their native tongue; they’re too busy falling in love with silly words like defenestrate. Well, let me tell you something: there’s an English word for that, too, and it’s to throw out a window, which is what I’ll want to do next time someone tries to tell me that Latin is better than English.

¹ A Short Introduction to English Grammar, 107

Grammar is a poorly understood and much-maligned word. It’s usually used to mean the set of rules governing all aspects of language—a tedious and convoluted list of strictures and prohibitions telling us what we should and shouldn’t say or write. It’s a subject that most people do not like and one that they do not find very useful in real life. It’s also one that most people are very insecure about. For example, whenever people learn that I’m an editor, I typically get one of the following reactions: (1) they have no idea what an editor does, or (2) they get nervous and say, “Well, I ain’t got no good grammar.” It’s really amazing how many people have uttered that exact phrase.

Hated though it may be, grammar is an important subject, especially in a world that relies more and more on written communication. So, first off, let’s define some terms. Grammar is the study of word forms (morphology) and sentence structure (syntax). These are fields that native speakers typically have no problems with. We all know how form plurals and past tenses and how to string words together to form a sentence. Usage is the far more relevant field, the one that tells us not to use ain’t or double negatives. Style is the set of rules governing more aesthetic issues like punctuation and capitalization.

The problem is that usage rules are not handed down from on high (unless you consider teachers and editors to be prophets, that is). In many ways, usage rules are like fashion rules: they are a generally accepted set of guidelines intended to keep you from looking stupid. Of course, usage guidelines are far more enduring than fashion rules. Unfortunately, many of those long-lived rules are more apocryphal than canonical, and many of the self-proclaimed prophets are false.

So it is with hesitation and much hemming and hawing that I answer questions like the recent one from my sister: “Should it be ‘than I’ instead of ‘than me’?” To me, these are never simple yes-or-no questions. It all depends on the context, the level of formality, the preferences of the speaker, and so on. When speaking to friends, it would sound odd—nay, wrong—to use the more formal “than I.” Grammar is a fairly straightforward field, but usage is a quagmire of history, context, pontification, and pedanticism.

But how can an editor and a graduate in English language speak such blasphemy? Shouldn’t I be the one defending good wholesome rules like “than I”? Again, this is not a simple yes-or-no question. I may be a defender of the language, but I defend what I have come to believe is right, not what outdated textbooks, fastidious English teachers, or long-dead pedagogues decreed as correct.

The English I defend is good and simple. It is not full of Latinate rules that never applied to English. It is not full of petty distinctions that fly in the face of the usage of educated speakers. It is elegant, simple, clear, and free from awkwardness. It is English as it is and should be, not English as it never was.

And that, my friends, is my standard of usage.

Historical linguistics is a field that many people don’t know a whole lot about. We all speak a language, and we all know that our words came from somewhere else, but we don’t always have the clearest idea as to where or why. So people speculate and come up with plausible explanations of word origins—what we call folk etymologies.

The problem is that etymologies are quite often not intuitive, nor can they be determined solely through deductive reasoning. Words take very circuitous paths on their way from history to the present. Over the course of a couple thousand years, a word can change so thoroughly that it becomes unrecognizable. Words that look similar aren’t always related, and words that are related don’t always look similar.

Take, for instance, just a few of the Indo-European words for five: fünf (German), cinq (French), pump (Welsh), cóig (Scottish), pénte (classical Greek), pyat’ (Russian), pãch (Hindi), and panj (Farsi). Believe it or not, all these words—as disparate as they seem—are related; they come from the same word, *penkwe. They may look very different, but they all changed via systematic sound changes.

Think of it like a Rubik’s cube: you start out with all the colors on their respective sides, and then you start turning the faces. Pretty soon, it’s a complete jumble. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of pattern to the arrangement of the colors now, but they didn’t get that way by chance; you made a specific series of twists to get them to end up the where they are.

This means that you can’t assume two words are related just because they look alike, or that two words aren’t related because they don’t look alike. Looking alike is a good start, but that’s all it is; next you have to find the systematic changes that connect the words. Historical linguistics isn’t just guesswork or finding lists of words that have a couple of sounds in common. It’s about knowing where the language has been and how languages change and then filling in the blanks.

There are lots of books and sites out there that purport to show that German comes from Hebrew or that Welsh and Hindi are closely related or any number of other weird claims. However, the thing that these all lack is systematicity. Without a system and without a knowledge of how languages change, historical linguistics is nothing more than a meaningless matching game. You can take the stickers off the Rubik’s cube and rearrange them to look good, but you haven’t really solved the puzzle.