12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

November 18, 2013

12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem—these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you start noticing some patterns. Inspired by a recent post titled “Grammar Police: Twelve Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes”, I decided to make a list of my own.

1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage. Many people who write about grammar seem to think that grammar means “any sort of rule of language, especially writing”. But strictly speaking, grammar refers to the structural rules of language, namely morphology (basically the way words are formed from roots and affixes), phonology (the system of sounds in a language), and syntax (the way phrases and clauses are formed from words). Most complaints about grammar are really about punctuation, spelling (such as problems with you’re/your and other homophone confusion) or usage (which is often about semantics). This post, for instance, spends two of its twelve points on commas and a third on quotation marks.

2. Treating style choices as rules. This article says that you should always use an Oxford (or serial) comma (the comma before and or or in a list) and that quotation marks should always follow commas and periods, but the latter is true only in most American styles (linguists often put the commas and periods outside quotes, and so do many non-American styles), and the former is only true of some American styles. I may prefer serial commas, but I’m not going to insist that everyone who doesn’t use them is making a mistake. It’s simply a matter of style, and style varies from one publisher to the next.

3. Ignoring register. There’s a time and a place for following the rules, but the writers of these lists typically treat English as though it had only one register: formal writing. They ignore the fact that following the rules in the wrong setting often sounds stuffy and stilted. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in casual conversation will make you sound like a pompous twit.

4. Saying that a disliked word isn’t a word. You may hate irregardless (I do), but that doesn’t mean it’s not a word. If it has its own meaning and you can use it in a sentence, guess what—it’s a word. Flirgle, on the other hand, is not a word—it’s just a bunch of sounds that I strung together in word-like fashion. Irregardless and its ilk may not be appropriate for use in formal registers, and you certainly don’t have to like them, but as Stan Carey says, “‘Not a word’ is not an argument.”

5. Turning proposals into ironclad laws. This one happens more often than you think. A great many rules of grammar and usage started life as proposals that became codified as inviolable laws over the years. The popular that/which rule, which I’ve discussed at length before, began as a proposal—not “everyone gets this wrong” but “wouldn’t it be nice if we made a distinction here?” But nowadays people have forgotten that a century or so ago, this rule simply didn’t exist, and they say things like “This is one of the most common mistakes out there, and understandably so.” (Actually, no, you don’t understand why everyone gets this “wrong”, because you don’t realize that this rule is a relatively recent invention by usage commentators that some copy editors and others have decided to enforce.) It’s easy to criticize people for not following rules that you’ve made up.

6. Failing to discuss exceptions to rules. Invented usage rules often ignore the complexities of actual usage. Lists of rules such as these go a step further and often ignore the complexities of those rules. For example, even if you follow the that/which rule, you need to know that you can’t use that after a preposition or after the demonstrative pronoun that—you have to use a restrictive which. Likewise, the less/fewer rule is usually reduced to statements like “use fewer for things you can count”, which leads to ugly and unidiomatic constructions like “one fewer thing to worry about”. Affect and effect aren’t as simple as some people make them out to be, either; affect is usually a verb and effect a noun, but affect can also be a noun (with stress on the first syllable) referring to the outward manifestation of emotions, while effect can be a verb meaning to cause or to make happen. Sometimes dumbing down rules just makes them dumb.

7. Overestimating the frequency of errors. The writer of this list says that misuse of nauseous is “Undoubtedly the most common mistake I encounter.” This claim seems worth doubting to me; I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say “nauseous”. Even if you consider it a misuse, it’s got to rate pretty far down the list in terms of frequency. This is why linguists like to rely on data for testable claims—because people tend to fall prey to all kinds of cognitive biases such as the frequency illusion.

8. Believing that etymology is destiny. Words change meaning all the time—it’s just a natural and inevitable part of language. But some people get fixated on the original meanings of some words and believe that those are the only correct meanings. For example, they’ll say that you can only use decimate to mean “to destroy one in ten”. This may seem like a reasonable argument, but it quickly becomes untenable when you realize that almost every single word in the language has changed meaning at some point, and that’s just in the few thousand years in which language has been written or can be reconstructed. And sometimes a new meaning is more useful anyway (which is precisely why it displaced an old meaning). As Jan Freeman said, “We don’t especially need a term that means ‘kill one in 10.’”

9. Simply bungling the rules. If you’re going to chastise people for not following the rules, you should know those rules yourself and be able to explain them clearly. You may dislike singular they, for instance, but you should know that it’s not a case of subject-predicate disagreement, as the author of this list claims—it’s an issue of pronoun-antecedent agreement, which is not the same thing. This list says that “‘less’ is reserved for hypothetical quantities”, but this isn’t true either; it’s reserved for noncount nouns, singular count nouns, and plural count nouns that aren’t generally thought of as discrete entities. Use of less has nothing to do with being hypothetical. And this one says that punctuation always goes inside quotation marks. In most American styles, it’s only commas and periods that always go inside. Colons, semicolons, and dashes always go outside, and question marks and exclamation marks only go inside sometimes.

10. Saying that good grammar leads to good communication. Contrary to popular belief, bad grammar (even using the broad definition that includes usage, spelling, and punctuation) is not usually an impediment to communication. A sentence like Ain’t nobody got time for that is quite intelligible, even though it violates several rules of Standard English (and, as a commenter notes, it’s perfectly grammatical in African American Vernacular English). The grammar and usage of nonstandard varieties of English are often radically different from Standard English, but different does not mean worse or less able to communicate. The biggest differences between Standard English and all its nonstandard varieties are that the former has been codified and that it is used in all registers, from casual conversation to formal writing. Many of the rules that these lists propagate are really more about signaling to the grammatical elite that you’re one of them—not that this is a bad thing, of course, but let’s not mistake it for something it’s not. In fact, claims about improving communication are often just a cover for the real purpose of these lists, which is . . .

11. Using grammar to put people down. This post sympathizes with someone who worries about being crucified by the grammar police and then says a few paragraphs later, “All hail the grammar police!” In other words, we like being able to crucify those who make mistakes. Then there are the put-downs about people’s education (“You’d think everyone learned this rule in fourth grade”) and more outright insults (“5 Grammar Mistakes that Make You Sound Like a Chimp”). After all, what’s the point in signaling that you’re one of the grammatical elite if you can’t take a few potshots at the ignorant masses?

12. Forgetting that correct usage ultimately comes from users. The disdain for the usage of common people is symptomatic of a larger problem: forgetting that correct usage ultimately comes from the people, not from editors, English teachers, or usage commentators. You’re certainly entitled to have your opinion about usage, but at some point you have to recognize that trying to fight the masses on a particular point of usage (especially if it’s a made-up rule) is like trying to fight the rising tide. Those who have invested in learning the rules naturally feel defensive of them and of the language in general, but you have no more right to the language than anyone else. You can be restrictive if you want and say that Standard English is based on the formal usage of educated writers, but any standard that is based on a set of rules that are simply invented and passed down is ultimately untenable.

And a bonus mistake:

13. Making mistakes themselves. It happens to the best of us. The act of making grammar or spelling mistakes in the course of pointing out someone else’s mistakes even has a name, Muphry’s law. This post probably has its fair share of typos. (If you spot one, feel free to point it out—politely!—in the comments.)

This post also appears on Huffington Post.

Grammar, Prescriptivism, Usage 145 Replies to “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes”

Jonathon Owen

COMMENTS

145 thoughts on “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes”

Indeed! There are actually peeps out there that believe it is “wrong” to end a sentence with a preposition, split an infinitive, or start a sentence with a conjunction!
And I’m liking the sound of “flirgle.” It think it should be a word! What should be its definition? I think it should be a verb, meaning “to haul off on a diatribe erroneously but pompously criticizing others’ use of language based on old fashioned ideas, mere style choice, and non-rules that became popular but are not real grammar or language rules.” Of course, I run the risk of everyone telling me, “Oh, do shut up and stop flirgling, Ima.”

Ima, I love that definition!

As a descriptive linguist myself, I loved this post, particularly the point about registers. Thank you for writing it.

I can’t help but feel that the point made in #1 is invalidated by the point made in #8.

Richard: it’s been used by good writers for the past 600 years. It seems reasonable to conclude that it is grammatical English.

“They” can be semantically singular: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=89

I like this new website…

[…] much a grammar Nazi to the detriment of language usage. There was a great blog post, outlining the 12 mistakes most people pointing out grammar mistakes make. It’s a must read. Once you realize the fluidity and ever changing nature of language, a […]

I don’t think 1 and 8 contradict each other. One word can have more than one meaning. If you want to talk about a subject in detail, it makes sense to use the specialized meaning.

I don’t want to sound like those people you are criticizing, but would it not be more appropriate “Whom did you give the book to?” instead of “To whom did you give the book?” (re: mistake 3)
While I don’t mind when people use ‘who’ instead of ‘whom’, I think it is important to know the difference. It helps students a lot when they learn foreign languages in which differences such as this one exist. Also, as Jane Lienau pointed out, while it might not be so important to speak and write correctly all the time, it is very important when you apply for a job.
As you pointed out, grammar books should not ignore registers, but we should also teach our students to be aware of various registers.

[…] Arrant Pedantry » Blog Archive » 12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Mak…. […]

[…] Arrant Pedantry

First, thank you very much for this. It’s always great to hear another voice of reason added to the discussion.

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Jelena,

I think you have yet to internalize some of what’s written here. When applying for a job, the key is not whether you speak or write “correctly” or “incorrectly” so much as whether you use language that matches the conventions expected of that job. If I went in to apply for a job on an oil rig and started saying “Whom did you give my resume to?” then I would be denied that job in the very least. I don’t mean to be curmudgeonly about that, but it’s one of his main points, and I think it really is worth understanding thoroughly.

As for who/whom, I’m a PhD student in Applied Linguistics, and I could cite for you a whole slew of research looking at English learners of Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, and Russian that disconfirms your hypothesis that making a distinction between who and whom will help people acquire a second language case system. It really doesn’t work that way. When learning Korean and Japanese, learners start correctly applying the accusative and dative particles to question words before receiving any explicit instruction at all, for example.

I think that the suggestion to include various registers necessarily implies an explanation of how they are used differentially. Hopefully, that can help us move to a place where the content of someone’s speech, rather than the particular set of conventions used to express it, is given the focus it deserves.

I particularly like your point about where to put the commas in regards to quotation marks. I seem to always see them within the quote, but my own sensibilities says they shoud be outside *if* they’re not a part of the quote… I feel “wrong” for doing like everyone else, and I feel “wrong” for doing it the way I want. Just pleased to find some other support out there for “my way”.

As for grammar/spelling/etc rules being dictated by the people… I’m still going ot cringe every time I see “Could of”, “Would of”, or “Should of”

I’m sure that you can draw such a clean distinction between grammar and punctuation. For example, is a comma splice a matter of incorrect grammar or misused punctuation?

The points in this post (as well as the comments) are precisely why I’m terrified to send anything I write to anyone (publisher). I already know I’m not a perfectly educated writer. I already know I use 40 words to describe some idea that could have used 12. I completely understand my weaknesses in writing. However, the need to express and share is very great. How does one overcome this fear? It’s paralyzing.

Thank you.

Thanks for that. It’s interesting to see how rules evolve over the years. At one time, double-negatives were quite acceptable, and we’re clearly starting to accept the notional agreement in sentences like “If everyone would raise their hands…”

Murphy’s! Quite clever. Enjoyed the other 12, as I am a grammar buffoon!

Kolein, that is precisely the problem. There are people, and a lot of them, who exclude others based on their outward appearance (whether it be physical, geographical, racial, dialectical, orthographic, based on accent, the clothes they drive wear, etc.). The problem should never be your use of a comma, or that you break a rule that should never have been, all in a language that has a long, long history of change (which of course is a good thing). The problem is that people will find ways to demean and exclude others. Bigotry exists, and outwardly everyone agrees it is a bad thing. However, I’m thinking that language “usage” is the last socially acceptable holdout for bigotry.

Nice post! Insisting on prescriptive rules of this sort often overlooks overlapping descriptive rules, which muddies the waters overall. For example, on “less” vs. “fewer”, nobody would say “fewer sugar”, even if they would say “less books”. (Yes, I put the punctuation inside and used singular “they” :-).)

I worked for a while for an editor who insisted on serial commas. At the same time, I was writing for a publication that would not allow serial commas, unless the meaning would be changed without them. That way lies madness.

Tony, if you are unable to distinguish between what linguists and lexicographers say, and what unskilled undergraduates say, I would have to be concerned about your pedagogy.

Yes, my particular frustration is with pedantic people who get it wrong.
I heard someone ring a radio talk-back on “grammar” to complain about the spelling of “till”, saying that it irritated her that they left off the apostrophe and added an “l”.
Nobody pointed out that “till” is a perfectly acceptable word, what with it being in the dictionary for several ‘undred years and all.

For the benefit of those who offered a needless correction, Muphry’s law states that “If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”

Wow, so many comments. I thought this blog was pretty moribund.

Also: “nauseous”. Most people who have bothered to look it up know the modern peevish distinction is complete bunk. It’s a word found pretty often in 18th and 19th century scientific works to mean “inclined to nausea”. Still, there’s a general feeling that, stylistically, in formal written English, it shouldn’t be used.

Except recently I came across this passage in Izaak Walton’s Lives of Donne, etc:

“This he told him: and told him, that the law of this nation–by which law he claims his rent–does not undertake to make men honest or merciful; but does what it can to restrain men from being dishonest or unmerciful, and yet was defective in both: and that taking any rent from his poor Tenant, for what God suffered him not to enjoy, though the law allowed him to do so, yet if he did so, he was too like that rich Steward which he had mentioned to him; and told him that riches so gotten, and added to his great estate, would, as Job says, “prove like gravel in his teeth:” would in time so corrode his conscience, or become so nauseous when he lay upon his deathbed, that he would then labour to vomit it up, and not be able: and therefore advised him, being very rich, to make friends of his unrighteous Mammon, before that evil day come upon him: but however, neither for his own sake, nor for God’s sake, to take any rent of his poor, dejected, sad Tenant; for that were to gain a temporal, and lose his eternal happiness.”

I could have just quoted a tiny part of that, but, man, what a sentence! Walton is just so fun to read, and he’s also frequently upheld as a premier 17th century English stylist. I’ll never again shrink from using “nauseous” in any high-register, formal writing.

Many times, peevish writers rely on the authority of fourth-rate usage writers for their proclamations. I prefer to follow the examples of the best, most vivid writers of English.

From item 7: “This claim seems worth doubting to me”? You mean “dubious” or “doubtful”, I presume.

Arrant Pedantry