7 ms·

Pedants' Favorite Grammar Rules are Probably Fake

85 points by mkr-hn 11y ago

Jun8 11y ago
"These are “the modern truths about language: language changes constantly; change is normal; spoken language is the language; correctness rests upon usage; all usage is relative.” There's of course truth to these statements, backed by a lot of linguistic research. Yet one has to be careful so as not to lean too much the other way. Using certain forms of language may be acceptable to your local peer group but may be a marker that others pick up on and label you. As for "all usage is relative": I think the points pg makes in his essay "Taste for Makers" (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html) are spot on (though he was talking in the context of art, beauty, and taste): "Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things. Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it."
- aaron-lebo 11y ago
  Taste is entirely a personal preference. The trick is to get other people to agree with your own. It's hard to look at the drastically different ideas of what is "tasteful" across different cultures and believe that there's any such thing as a universal view on it. We only have that mindset because Western/American culture in particular has been promulgated across the world and poeple in Hollywood or SV have chosen what is or isn't fine. Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Some of the linguistic tricks from those in the lowest rungs of society now dominate our discourse and it's because they didn't care.
  - pdabbadabba 11y ago
    Well you should care if you want to be hired, published, or generally taken seriously in certain environments. (Note that speaking "proper" English is not always what you want either; there are some social situations where other dialects will get you farther -- and, of course, all of this also applies to languages other than English.) But I also take your point. The problem--as is often the case with various forms of stereotyping--is that such preconceptions are simultaneously useful as indicators about a person you are dealing with (such as level of education), but also deserving of serious skepticism since they can have the effect of disadvantaging certain groups, cause you to miss interesting opportunities, and generally making life less interesting by enforcing a stultifying uniformity.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      It's pretty normal to switch between styles of speech depending on the situation. Word and grammar choices you use with a good friend are different than those you'd use in a television interview are different than those you'd use in court. There are times in your life in which you need to speak with precision, and that means using generally agreed upon grammar and vocabulary. There's no harm in breaking those rules in everyday speech, but you should know them.
  - nothrabannosir 11y ago
    Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Theoretically true, but how far are you willing to go to defend this? E.g., how much less are you willing to earn per year? How much risk do you want to take for your children not getting into that school you have your eye on? What about getting that promotion "because the boss thinks you show promise"? Having the benefit of the doubt is a powerful thing, and it makes or breaks decisions in or out of your favor every single day. That is, assuming you're living in a society, of course. If you're crazy Chad in his forest cabin, then, by all means, talk to the spirits in any tongue you please.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Ok, it's a set of personal preferences mostly shared by the entire human population (and other mammals to a lesser degree). Yes, there is some variance, but it's much smaller than the shared parts. In reality, everybody cares if people labels them, and for good reason, because we depend on collaboration with others for satisfying about 100% of needs, some of what are exact variants of "collaboration with others", like socialization.
- scoofy 11y ago
  It is better to think of language in the same way we think of maps. Yes, the borders change over time. Yes the map, even a few years ago looks different, but if you start talking about Kashmir you're going to start a lot of fights, and if you say that Paris isn't necessarily in France, people will think you're a lunatic. As it stands, i don't care how you say the plural of octopus, but if you say something "begs the question" that better end your sentence, you plebe.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    I've declared defeat on "begs the question". The original meaning (a logical fallacy where the premise for an argument assumes the conclusion) is just not known to enough people, and the modern (mis)use just sounds too close to what the words mean in isolation. I've also mostly given up on "literally", which I think is worse, because it's now coming to mean its opposite.
    - mturmon 11y ago
      Bryan Garner, author of an excellent and well-regarded dictionary of English usage (famously reviewed at great length by DFW in Harper's), coined a term for such transitional constructions: "skunked words". The idea is that there are two groups of people, one holding to an original meaning, and one with a new usage. Sometimes the new meaning can be directly opposite the original meaning (e.g.: nonplussed), or just different (e.g., hopefully). So, writers who wish to be understood cannot use "nonplussed," because readers will not know what is meant. A skunked term. A longer explanation: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.html http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.htm...
      - Nadya 11y ago
        Another example: "That's so bad!" meaning "That's awesome!" If I can go on a tangent about poor terms...contranyms will throw people for a loop if they are unaware of one of the meanings. Or worse, if the sentence is constructed in a way meant to cause confusion. "I would be bound for Chicago if I wasn't bound to this chair." [0] "It is transparent that the transparent man cannot be seen." [1] "Three people are left after five left." [2] "If we go back two weeks, when Tom came back, we decided to push the date back three weeks." [3] [0] I would be moving towards Chicago if I wasn't unable to move from this chair. [1] It's visible to anyone that the invisible man cannot be seen. [2] Three people remain after five departed. [3] If you go into the past two weeks, when Tom returned, we decided then to push the date further by 3 weeks. I had fun writing those.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  This is one place where pg is simply flat-out wrong, on a couple of levels. If taste being mere preference meant that you couldn't be better at design, no matter how many people want it to be possible to be better at design, that wouldn't refute that taste is preference. That something implies something people don't like doesn't make it untrue. But more fundamentally, he's wrong that taste being preference makes it impossible to get better at design. A big part of design -- as with any form of communication -- is understanding the particular audience you are targeting and how to address that audience. In design that means understanding the preferences in the target audience and how best to make tradeoffs among them to achieve the effect you want -- whether it's too maximize appeal to a narrow group with cohesive preferences or a broad group with divers preferences. You can get better at that even though taste if preference. You may not be able to reduce the practical skill involved readily to simple mechanical rules, but for designers that's a good thing if true -- it means it'll be hard to automate then away.
scotchmi_st 11y ago
I would say that unless you know the rules (imaginary or real), it's not possible to break them in a way that is interesting. A programming example: PEP 8 makes no difference to whether or not your Python code will run. You can quite happily code all day without knowing anything about it. There are also plenty of times when you shouldn't follow it religiously. But without reading it and taking on board what it means, people will find reading your code more tiresome, and you won't know when to break the rules in a way that's helpful or interesting for the reader. The same, I believe, applies to English grammar.
- rayiner 11y ago
  That's a fantastic point. You can communicate a lot by using one rule instead of another, or purposefully breaking a rule. But that doesn't work if you don't know the rules in the first place.
- bjt 11y ago
  I see a few distinctions between code and prose. Code is written with two kinds of readers in mind: the computer and other humans. Prose is written just for humans. With code, there is a very precise set of rules determining whether the code will be readable by a computer. There is no correspondingly precise set of rules for understandability by humans. I can see the analogy between PEP 8 and grammar rules, but I think there's an important distinction in the provenance of those rules. PEP 8 is a formal proposal adopted by the BDFL. There is no mechanism for submitting or approving formal proposals for English grammar rules. So the spoken language is always the authority on what's correct and what isn't.
  - evanpw 11y ago
    > There is no mechanism for submitting or approving formal proposals for English grammar rules. Yes, but to some extent that's a peculiarity of English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators.
  - scotchmi_st 11y ago
    > Code is written with two kinds of readers in mind: the computer and other humans. Prose is written just for humans. I don't think the fact that code is also meant to be read by a computer is relevant in this context. But let's take another example if that doesn't work for you: the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It's written in a phonetic Edinburgh style. By 'normal' english standards, it doesn't make any sense. If someone was to write in the same style way without any knowledge of English grammar and spelling, you would just assume they couldn't spell. But that's why, in the context of a novel written by a talented author, it's actually a great bit of prose. I could give thousands of other examples.
gergles 11y ago
I'm amazed that even (pseudo-)academic articles now have clickbait titles.
sweezyjeezy 11y ago
My pedantry is involuntary, these rules were drilled into me as a kid. When I see a mistake my eye gets snagged on it, as if I were running and stumbled over - it's annoying. So this article doesn't help me much personally.
- Swizec 11y ago
  Which, is often on purpose. Sometimes I want you to. Trip.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    Which is fine, as long as it's deliberate.
- ad-hominem 11y ago
  a compound sentence without a conjunction or semicolon? won't you think of the children?!
russelluresti 11y ago
This article is definitely useful for the HN community. ... </sarcasm>
- noarchy 11y ago
  I genuinely think it is useful to have articles like this on HN. We do have our share of pedants, and many with comments that do nothing but correct someone's grammar or spelling. I suppose a debate can be had over how useful any of that is. Is it worth shutting down or diverting a discussion due to things like grammar?
  - buckbova 11y ago
    > Is it worth shutting down or diverting a discussion due to things like grammar? I say absolutely not. If you can correct someone, then you must understand them.
  - russelluresti 11y ago
    Sure, every community has pedants, but HN is supposed to be for news that relates to startups, technology, and web/software development. There are a ton of other sites and communities where articles like this belong - reddit, digg, etc., HN just shouldn't be one of them. Would you post this article on a web-development-based subreddit? But hating "grammar nazis" is something everyone loves to do, and feeling mentally superior is something that the HN community loves to feel, so articles like this get up-votes while people who want to stay on-topic get down-votes. But, oh well, just another step towards the degradation of this community and its content. NBD.
aaron-lebo 11y ago
I used to be a pretty big pedant, then I took a semester of a lingusitcs program and the point was hammered home that language really is relative. Right/wrong has very little place in the topic. I can't find the exact quote but in Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky makes some statement about how the ability for any person to speak, use, invent, modify, evolve language proves that everyone, not just a select few, are inherently creative and intelligent. We just don't always harness it. Of course, there are some limits to that statement (Chomsky would know that more than anyone else), but it rings true. The idioms and phrases that we deem correct today were incorrect at some point in the past and there are phrases that sound wrong now which will be perfectly natural in the future. Being a pedant is a waste of time, what's more: it stifles creativity. As a small example, I constantly see "bias" used in place of "biased" and "dominate" used in place of "dominant" online, usually in discussions about sports. I hate those uses every single time I see them (especially the latter because the spelling/sounds don't even match), but I've come to realize that language will often simplify itself and take shortcuts, and that may be what's happening here. What would be really interesting is to track the evolution of language, which you could do online very well, even perhaps arriving to the origin of certain words/phrases, etc. It's really a fascinating topic if you can let your own bias get out of the way.
- mkr-hn 11y ago
  I feel the same way about women/woman. It used to irk me when I saw someone mix the two up, but then I realized I do it all the time by accident. For example, in the first draft of this very comment.
- Tenhundfeld 11y ago
  A Way with Words is a fantastic podcast, also aired on many NPR stations. Definitely check it out if this topic interests you. http://www.waywordradio.org/ http://www.waywordradio.org/ They usually have a segment about tracking the origins of certain words/phrases, often to a regional dialect. And they have segments about pet peeves or settling grammar disputes, e.g., between spouses. Listening to the show has helped my pedantic tendencies. I still think it's important to know the current established, mainstream grammar rules and vocabulary, but it's also important to understand that language is always evolving and highly dependent upon context.
felixhandte 11y ago
This article does a very poor job of acknowledging and discussing the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics. In contrast, David Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" (pdf: http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...) is an excellent, though lengthy, discussion of these issues. I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested in these sorts of things.
- nohat00 11y ago
  There is such a thing as linguistic prescription, but there isn't really such a thing as "prescriptive linguistics". There are linguists, who study and describe language, and then there are people who promulgate their opinions about language. Opinion promulgators are not "prescriptive linguists" and what they practice is not "prescriptive linguistics".
  - pavedwalden 11y ago
    Is this a meta-joke about pedants?
melling 11y ago
Anyways... most people ignore them.
hnal943 11y ago
Eh, if language is primarily about communication, there are many benefits to standardization. It feels like a cop-out to just say that everyone gets to make up their own rules of grammar. People also used to make up their own spellings, but standardizing increased the efficacy of communication.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  There are benefits to standardization, but only if it is a decent standardization. As the article points out, language is about communicating ideas. A standardization that makes this task harder is probably worse than a non-standardized way that makes it easier.
- mkr-hn 11y ago
  I have never seen a situation where using a less common spelling or grammar was more distracting than the pedantic tangent it produced.
  - schoen 11y ago
    That may be true among native speakers with a roughly similar background, but it's not necessarily true in terms of language varieties and non-native speakers (most likely because the non-native speakers may only recognize one form, or spelling, or construction, or lexeme, and not be able to guess how an alternative is related).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    I have; I see it very regularly, in fact. I'm sure you'd see it more often as well if you worked in translation engineering...
  - dingaling 11y ago
    I've experienced confusion reading corporate documents which contained poor grammar or orthography. As an example of the latter, based loosely on a real example: It is preferred to take the server to run-level 1 then to reboot. So, I telinit 1 followed by shutdown -r now ...? In operational-readiness documents there really must not be any leeway for confusion or ambiguity, yet I've encountered many such examples. The usual retort of 'language evolves!' doesn't hold true in circumstances where a common, unequivocal meaning is required. You'd think programmers would be aware of that, writing strictly-defined grammar all day long!
wrsh07 11y ago
Despite this, it's still valuable to be able to speak with precision when necessary. The same is true of speaking concisely.
- zeroBanna1spec 11y ago
  Sure, but is there a point to all those boring English classes? I need to speak in a clear way for others to understand me. That may not mean speaking how my English teachers in public school expected me to. It's like starting a company. You have an idea, a product, but you have to build custom scaffolding, engineering, human resources. Whatever. There may be some common patterns/idioms one can rely on for guidance, but you'll rarely ever cling to them religiously. Which is, IMO (though backed by academic research as well), where a lot of this pedantry originates. Humans and their long history of forcing our personal notions of right/wrong on each other. It's ideas like this article, and this ensuing discussion that prop up my hope that we'll maybe, possibly, start realizing it's bullshit. Instead of saying "Hey, do it my way." we'll start asking how we can be of use.
Uhhrrr 11y ago
If they really believed this the title would be, "Fake Probably Is Grammar Rule Your Favorite".
- mkr-hn 11y ago
  English sentence construction flexibility is super. You can invent a construction to fit your point (and nothing else), but that doesn't mean there are hard rules.
p3d4nt 11y ago
English is a wonderful language, full of subtlety. For instance: "long and tortuous". Torturous is not the same. We are losing meaning. It is probably rude to correct people. I don't, I hope. I agree that language evolves but sometimes its just incorrect. I mean what in hell is 'wreck havoc', havoc is wrought not wrecked. It's probably already wrecked? I have heard 'wreck havoc' from a native speaker, a BBC radio presenter...live on air. Gaaah! What hope! Pity the poor etmyologists of the future! edit:grammar lol!
elchief 11y ago
From Archer: "I need a lead-acid battery, fifty units of plasma, some bolt cutters, and something called a - Defrimbulator?" "That's a made-up word." "They're all made up."
- tormeh 11y ago
  Also "what are we gonna do with literally, not figuratively, a ton of cocaine?"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
barteklev 11y ago
The topic is complex. Author is right that law/science/anything-orginated standard of language is a trap and misunderstanding. On the other hand this can be easly interpreted as "we can speak just as we want". As a language freak (and polyglot by the way) I have found out that one should develop his own language and in fact he/she's gonna do it anyway, the only choise - consciously or not. I've choosen to constantly improve my language and I like this decision, I've seen how big is language's influence on speaker. It's just like an operating system for computer. On the other hand if you want communicate efficiently you must accept the fact that everybody have own word meanings and speak a little differently and you should adapt to it. Another thing is relation language-subconsciousness, I belive there's very broad influence. Those factors that make caring about language worth. By the way conforming national standard is not the best way: "who's language - he/she rules", so if you want to rule, you need your personal. As usual, we need to find the golden mean.
vincentbarr 11y ago
What does this say for the GMAT? The test has two categories: verbal and quantitative. 35% of Verbal questions fall into a category called 'Sentence Correction', which test grammar. Many correct answers to these questions are hotly-debated and often in contradiction to current style guides. Perhaps, there is some value in segmenting test-takers in their ability to learn and apply an arbitrary set of rules in place of their own. But, perhaps not.
Zigurd 11y ago
The proof is in the pudding, which begs a large question that's growing like Topsy. Now I need to take a shower.
lexcorvus 11y ago
If enough people make the same error, especially if they're sufficiently high-status, eventually it becomes standard usage. But there's a transitional period during which those who care about clear communication are understandably disturbed by the mistake. E.g., the usage "I'm going to lay down" is wrong, but it's common even among educated speakers. (In this context "lay" requires an object; the right usage is "I'm going to lie down" or, more poetically, "I'm going to lay myself down.") Shall we simply lay down—sorry, lie down—and accept such linguistic shifts, or shall we rage against the dying of the lie, er, light?

85 points by mkr-hn 11y ago

Jun8 11y ago

"These are “the modern truths about language: language changes constantly; change is normal; spoken language is the language; correctness rests upon usage; all usage is relative.” There's of course truth to these statements, backed by a lot of linguistic research. Yet one has to be careful so as not to lean too much the other way. Using certain forms of language may be acceptable to your local peer group but may be a marker that others pick up on and label you. As for "all usage is relative": I think the points pg makes in his essay "Taste for Makers" (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html) are spot on (though he was talking in the context of art, beauty, and taste): "Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things. Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it."

aaron-lebo 11y ago
Taste is entirely a personal preference. The trick is to get other people to agree with your own. It's hard to look at the drastically different ideas of what is "tasteful" across different cultures and believe that there's any such thing as a universal view on it. We only have that mindset because Western/American culture in particular has been promulgated across the world and poeple in Hollywood or SV have chosen what is or isn't fine. Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Some of the linguistic tricks from those in the lowest rungs of society now dominate our discourse and it's because they didn't care.
- pdabbadabba 11y ago
  Well you should care if you want to be hired, published, or generally taken seriously in certain environments. (Note that speaking "proper" English is not always what you want either; there are some social situations where other dialects will get you farther -- and, of course, all of this also applies to languages other than English.) But I also take your point. The problem--as is often the case with various forms of stereotyping--is that such preconceptions are simultaneously useful as indicators about a person you are dealing with (such as level of education), but also deserving of serious skepticism since they can have the effect of disadvantaging certain groups, cause you to miss interesting opportunities, and generally making life less interesting by enforcing a stultifying uniformity.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    It's pretty normal to switch between styles of speech depending on the situation. Word and grammar choices you use with a good friend are different than those you'd use in a television interview are different than those you'd use in court. There are times in your life in which you need to speak with precision, and that means using generally agreed upon grammar and vocabulary. There's no harm in breaking those rules in everyday speech, but you should know them.
- nothrabannosir 11y ago
  Also, who cares if people label you for your use of language. Those people can get over themselves. Theoretically true, but how far are you willing to go to defend this? E.g., how much less are you willing to earn per year? How much risk do you want to take for your children not getting into that school you have your eye on? What about getting that promotion "because the boss thinks you show promise"? Having the benefit of the doubt is a powerful thing, and it makes or breaks decisions in or out of your favor every single day. That is, assuming you're living in a society, of course. If you're crazy Chad in his forest cabin, then, by all means, talk to the spirits in any tongue you please.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Ok, it's a set of personal preferences mostly shared by the entire human population (and other mammals to a lesser degree). Yes, there is some variance, but it's much smaller than the shared parts. In reality, everybody cares if people labels them, and for good reason, because we depend on collaboration with others for satisfying about 100% of needs, some of what are exact variants of "collaboration with others", like socialization.
scoofy 11y ago
It is better to think of language in the same way we think of maps. Yes, the borders change over time. Yes the map, even a few years ago looks different, but if you start talking about Kashmir you're going to start a lot of fights, and if you say that Paris isn't necessarily in France, people will think you're a lunatic. As it stands, i don't care how you say the plural of octopus, but if you say something "begs the question" that better end your sentence, you plebe.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I've declared defeat on "begs the question". The original meaning (a logical fallacy where the premise for an argument assumes the conclusion) is just not known to enough people, and the modern (mis)use just sounds too close to what the words mean in isolation. I've also mostly given up on "literally", which I think is worse, because it's now coming to mean its opposite.
  - mturmon 11y ago
    Bryan Garner, author of an excellent and well-regarded dictionary of English usage (famously reviewed at great length by DFW in Harper's), coined a term for such transitional constructions: "skunked words". The idea is that there are two groups of people, one holding to an original meaning, and one with a new usage. Sometimes the new meaning can be directly opposite the original meaning (e.g.: nonplussed), or just different (e.g., hopefully). So, writers who wish to be understood cannot use "nonplussed," because readers will not know what is meant. A skunked term. A longer explanation: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.html http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2014/11/skunked-terms.htm...
    - Nadya 11y ago
      Another example: "That's so bad!" meaning "That's awesome!" If I can go on a tangent about poor terms...contranyms will throw people for a loop if they are unaware of one of the meanings. Or worse, if the sentence is constructed in a way meant to cause confusion. "I would be bound for Chicago if I wasn't bound to this chair." [0] "It is transparent that the transparent man cannot be seen." [1] "Three people are left after five left." [2] "If we go back two weeks, when Tom came back, we decided to push the date back three weeks." [3] [0] I would be moving towards Chicago if I wasn't unable to move from this chair. [1] It's visible to anyone that the invisible man cannot be seen. [2] Three people remain after five departed. [3] If you go into the past two weeks, when Tom returned, we decided then to push the date further by 3 weeks. I had fun writing those.
dragonwriter 11y ago
This is one place where pg is simply flat-out wrong, on a couple of levels. If taste being mere preference meant that you couldn't be better at design, no matter how many people want it to be possible to be better at design, that wouldn't refute that taste is preference. That something implies something people don't like doesn't make it untrue. But more fundamentally, he's wrong that taste being preference makes it impossible to get better at design. A big part of design -- as with any form of communication -- is understanding the particular audience you are targeting and how to address that audience. In design that means understanding the preferences in the target audience and how best to make tradeoffs among them to achieve the effect you want -- whether it's too maximize appeal to a narrow group with cohesive preferences or a broad group with divers preferences. You can get better at that even though taste if preference. You may not be able to reduce the practical skill involved readily to simple mechanical rules, but for designers that's a good thing if true -- it means it'll be hard to automate then away.

scotchmi_st 11y ago

I would say that unless you know the rules (imaginary or real), it's not possible to break them in a way that is interesting. A programming example: PEP 8 makes no difference to whether or not your Python code will run. You can quite happily code all day without knowing anything about it. There are also plenty of times when you shouldn't follow it religiously. But without reading it and taking on board what it means, people will find reading your code more tiresome, and you won't know when to break the rules in a way that's helpful or interesting for the reader. The same, I believe, applies to English grammar.

rayiner 11y ago
That's a fantastic point. You can communicate a lot by using one rule instead of another, or purposefully breaking a rule. But that doesn't work if you don't know the rules in the first place.
bjt 11y ago
I see a few distinctions between code and prose. Code is written with two kinds of readers in mind: the computer and other humans. Prose is written just for humans. With code, there is a very precise set of rules determining whether the code will be readable by a computer. There is no correspondingly precise set of rules for understandability by humans. I can see the analogy between PEP 8 and grammar rules, but I think there's an important distinction in the provenance of those rules. PEP 8 is a formal proposal adopted by the BDFL. There is no mechanism for submitting or approving formal proposals for English grammar rules. So the spoken language is always the authority on what's correct and what isn't.
- evanpw 11y ago
  > There is no mechanism for submitting or approving formal proposals for English grammar rules. Yes, but to some extent that's a peculiarity of English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators.
- scotchmi_st 11y ago
  > Code is written with two kinds of readers in mind: the computer and other humans. Prose is written just for humans. I don't think the fact that code is also meant to be read by a computer is relevant in this context. But let's take another example if that doesn't work for you: the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It's written in a phonetic Edinburgh style. By 'normal' english standards, it doesn't make any sense. If someone was to write in the same style way without any knowledge of English grammar and spelling, you would just assume they couldn't spell. But that's why, in the context of a novel written by a talented author, it's actually a great bit of prose. I could give thousands of other examples.

gergles 11y ago

I'm amazed that even (pseudo-)academic articles now have clickbait titles.

sweezyjeezy 11y ago

My pedantry is involuntary, these rules were drilled into me as a kid. When I see a mistake my eye gets snagged on it, as if I were running and stumbled over - it's annoying. So this article doesn't help me much personally.

Swizec 11y ago
Which, is often on purpose. Sometimes I want you to. Trip.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Which is fine, as long as it's deliberate.
ad-hominem 11y ago
a compound sentence without a conjunction or semicolon? won't you think of the children?!

russelluresti 11y ago

This article is definitely useful for the HN community. ... </sarcasm>

noarchy 11y ago
I genuinely think it is useful to have articles like this on HN. We do have our share of pedants, and many with comments that do nothing but correct someone's grammar or spelling. I suppose a debate can be had over how useful any of that is. Is it worth shutting down or diverting a discussion due to things like grammar?
- buckbova 11y ago
  > Is it worth shutting down or diverting a discussion due to things like grammar? I say absolutely not. If you can correct someone, then you must understand them.
- russelluresti 11y ago
  Sure, every community has pedants, but HN is supposed to be for news that relates to startups, technology, and web/software development. There are a ton of other sites and communities where articles like this belong - reddit, digg, etc., HN just shouldn't be one of them. Would you post this article on a web-development-based subreddit? But hating "grammar nazis" is something everyone loves to do, and feeling mentally superior is something that the HN community loves to feel, so articles like this get up-votes while people who want to stay on-topic get down-votes. But, oh well, just another step towards the degradation of this community and its content. NBD.

aaron-lebo 11y ago

I used to be a pretty big pedant, then I took a semester of a lingusitcs program and the point was hammered home that language really is relative. Right/wrong has very little place in the topic. I can't find the exact quote but in Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky makes some statement about how the ability for any person to speak, use, invent, modify, evolve language proves that everyone, not just a select few, are inherently creative and intelligent. We just don't always harness it. Of course, there are some limits to that statement (Chomsky would know that more than anyone else), but it rings true. The idioms and phrases that we deem correct today were incorrect at some point in the past and there are phrases that sound wrong now which will be perfectly natural in the future. Being a pedant is a waste of time, what's more: it stifles creativity. As a small example, I constantly see "bias" used in place of "biased" and "dominate" used in place of "dominant" online, usually in discussions about sports. I hate those uses every single time I see them (especially the latter because the spelling/sounds don't even match), but I've come to realize that language will often simplify itself and take shortcuts, and that may be what's happening here. What would be really interesting is to track the evolution of language, which you could do online very well, even perhaps arriving to the origin of certain words/phrases, etc. It's really a fascinating topic if you can let your own bias get out of the way.

mkr-hn 11y ago
I feel the same way about women/woman. It used to irk me when I saw someone mix the two up, but then I realized I do it all the time by accident. For example, in the first draft of this very comment.
Tenhundfeld 11y ago
A Way with Words is a fantastic podcast, also aired on many NPR stations. Definitely check it out if this topic interests you. http://www.waywordradio.org/ http://www.waywordradio.org/ They usually have a segment about tracking the origins of certain words/phrases, often to a regional dialect. And they have segments about pet peeves or settling grammar disputes, e.g., between spouses. Listening to the show has helped my pedantic tendencies. I still think it's important to know the current established, mainstream grammar rules and vocabulary, but it's also important to understand that language is always evolving and highly dependent upon context.

felixhandte 11y ago

This article does a very poor job of acknowledging and discussing the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics. In contrast, David Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" (pdf: http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...) is an excellent, though lengthy, discussion of these issues. I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested in these sorts of things.

nohat00 11y ago
There is such a thing as linguistic prescription, but there isn't really such a thing as "prescriptive linguistics". There are linguists, who study and describe language, and then there are people who promulgate their opinions about language. Opinion promulgators are not "prescriptive linguists" and what they practice is not "prescriptive linguistics".
- pavedwalden 11y ago
  Is this a meta-joke about pedants?

melling 11y ago

Anyways... most people ignore them.

hnal943 11y ago

Eh, if language is primarily about communication, there are many benefits to standardization. It feels like a cop-out to just say that everyone gets to make up their own rules of grammar. People also used to make up their own spellings, but standardizing increased the efficacy of communication.

vonmoltke 11y ago
There are benefits to standardization, but only if it is a decent standardization. As the article points out, language is about communicating ideas. A standardization that makes this task harder is probably worse than a non-standardized way that makes it easier.
mkr-hn 11y ago
I have never seen a situation where using a less common spelling or grammar was more distracting than the pedantic tangent it produced.
- schoen 11y ago
  That may be true among native speakers with a roughly similar background, but it's not necessarily true in terms of language varieties and non-native speakers (most likely because the non-native speakers may only recognize one form, or spelling, or construction, or lexeme, and not be able to guess how an alternative is related).
  - deleted 11y ago
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- scrollaway 11y ago
  I have; I see it very regularly, in fact. I'm sure you'd see it more often as well if you worked in translation engineering...
- dingaling 11y ago
  I've experienced confusion reading corporate documents which contained poor grammar or orthography. As an example of the latter, based loosely on a real example: It is preferred to take the server to run-level 1 then to reboot. So, I telinit 1 followed by shutdown -r now ...? In operational-readiness documents there really must not be any leeway for confusion or ambiguity, yet I've encountered many such examples. The usual retort of 'language evolves!' doesn't hold true in circumstances where a common, unequivocal meaning is required. You'd think programmers would be aware of that, writing strictly-defined grammar all day long!

wrsh07 11y ago

Despite this, it's still valuable to be able to speak with precision when necessary. The same is true of speaking concisely.

zeroBanna1spec 11y ago
Sure, but is there a point to all those boring English classes? I need to speak in a clear way for others to understand me. That may not mean speaking how my English teachers in public school expected me to. It's like starting a company. You have an idea, a product, but you have to build custom scaffolding, engineering, human resources. Whatever. There may be some common patterns/idioms one can rely on for guidance, but you'll rarely ever cling to them religiously. Which is, IMO (though backed by academic research as well), where a lot of this pedantry originates. Humans and their long history of forcing our personal notions of right/wrong on each other. It's ideas like this article, and this ensuing discussion that prop up my hope that we'll maybe, possibly, start realizing it's bullshit. Instead of saying "Hey, do it my way." we'll start asking how we can be of use.

Uhhrrr 11y ago

If they really believed this the title would be, "Fake Probably Is Grammar Rule Your Favorite".

mkr-hn 11y ago
English sentence construction flexibility is super. You can invent a construction to fit your point (and nothing else), but that doesn't mean there are hard rules.

p3d4nt 11y ago

English is a wonderful language, full of subtlety. For instance: "long and tortuous". Torturous is not the same. We are losing meaning. It is probably rude to correct people. I don't, I hope. I agree that language evolves but sometimes its just incorrect. I mean what in hell is 'wreck havoc', havoc is wrought not wrecked. It's probably already wrecked? I have heard 'wreck havoc' from a native speaker, a BBC radio presenter...live on air. Gaaah! What hope! Pity the poor etmyologists of the future! edit:grammar lol!

elchief 11y ago

From Archer: "I need a lead-acid battery, fifty units of plasma, some bolt cutters, and something called a - Defrimbulator?" "That's a made-up word." "They're all made up."

tormeh 11y ago
Also "what are we gonna do with literally, not figuratively, a ton of cocaine?"

deleted 11y ago

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barteklev 11y ago

The topic is complex. Author is right that law/science/anything-orginated standard of language is a trap and misunderstanding. On the other hand this can be easly interpreted as "we can speak just as we want". As a language freak (and polyglot by the way) I have found out that one should develop his own language and in fact he/she's gonna do it anyway, the only choise - consciously or not. I've choosen to constantly improve my language and I like this decision, I've seen how big is language's influence on speaker. It's just like an operating system for computer. On the other hand if you want communicate efficiently you must accept the fact that everybody have own word meanings and speak a little differently and you should adapt to it. Another thing is relation language-subconsciousness, I belive there's very broad influence. Those factors that make caring about language worth. By the way conforming national standard is not the best way: "who's language - he/she rules", so if you want to rule, you need your personal. As usual, we need to find the golden mean.

vincentbarr 11y ago

What does this say for the GMAT? The test has two categories: verbal and quantitative. 35% of Verbal questions fall into a category called 'Sentence Correction', which test grammar. Many correct answers to these questions are hotly-debated and often in contradiction to current style guides. Perhaps, there is some value in segmenting test-takers in their ability to learn and apply an arbitrary set of rules in place of their own. But, perhaps not.

Zigurd 11y ago

The proof is in the pudding, which begs a large question that's growing like Topsy. Now I need to take a shower.

lexcorvus 11y ago

If enough people make the same error, especially if they're sufficiently high-status, eventually it becomes standard usage. But there's a transitional period during which those who care about clear communication are understandably disturbed by the mistake. E.g., the usage "I'm going to lay down" is wrong, but it's common even among educated speakers. (In this context "lay" requires an object; the right usage is "I'm going to lie down" or, more poetically, "I'm going to lay myself down.") Shall we simply lay down—sorry, lie down—and accept such linguistic shifts, or shall we rage against the dying of the lie, er, light?