9 ms·

>> If it seems hard or even impossible to defend the American way on the merits, that's probably because it emerged from aesthetic, not logical, considerations.

• jgfoot 15y ago
  Adherence to arbitrary grammar rules is a signal. It shows that the writer has training in what the rules are, and the ability to follow them. To some readers, this can be a signal of credibility. I don't care if the rules make sense; I care if someone will think less of my writing if I break the rules.
  • albedoa 15y ago
    When I am reading, I first look for signs that the author has been trained to know the rules. Later, I look for him or her to break them. There's something about knowing that you are breaking a rule that makes it feel more legitimate to me. You are using your license instead of your ignorance. I enjoy seeing that in what I am reading. Edit: I wrote this in part to encourage you to relax your style and care a little less. Tell me what you think :)
    • jimbokun 15y ago
      I recently finished Bill Simmons The Book of Basketball. He frequently breaks a grammatical rule, then includes a footnote saying something like "Yes, that really did deserve a double negative."
  • telemachos 15y ago
    People often reply something along these lines. I don't entirely disagree, but I have some big reservations. First, which rules? That is, does it still bother you if a writer uses 'will' where some very stuffy people would prefer (even insist on!) 'shall'? If not, why not? If so, why? Notice that no matter which way you jump on this, you're already making choices. What about 'nauseous' and 'nauseated'? Do you insist on that distinction in writing? How about in speech? Do you correct people who say 'can' instead of 'may'? How about 'less' and 'few'? Do you say 'your being here makes me happy' or 'you being here makes me happy'? There's always going to be room for some pedantic asshat to correct you. It's up to you, however, to pick the cases where you push back, or shrug, or accept the correction quietly (because you've had the fight too often). You also have to decide who you want to impress. If you carefully rearrange all sentences so that they don't end with a preposition, you may impress the grammar school teachers and the self-satisfied pedants of the world, but you will only look silly to the professors of Linguistics over at Language Log[1]. So it's not entirely good enough to say "Just follow the arbitrary rules in order to demonstrate that you are a thoughtful, well-educated, intelligent person." It's always a case of pick your rules and your battles.
    • jgfoot 15y ago
• drbaskin 15y ago
  You should never end a sentence with a preposition. The mathematician Paul Halmos loved issues like these and once constructed a sentence that ends in five prepositions: "What did you want to bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
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  • hugh3 15y ago
    This is the kind of thing up with which I will not put.
  • run4yourlives 15y ago
    In my mind this "sentence" validates the need for the rule. :-)
    • hugh3 15y ago
      Ah, but can you rephrase it using the rule to make it better? "For what did you bring up that book from out of which I did not want to be read?" Not a huge improvement.
      • WiseWeasel 15y ago
        I'd say it's an improvement; unlike the original, I am able to parse your version.
      • hammock 15y ago
        It's a shitty and awkward sentence to begin with (with which to begin), primarily because it unnecessarily uses the passive voice to entangle two ideas that are clearer when approached one at a time in the active voice: I didn't want anyone to read out of that book to me. Why did you want to bring it up? See? Contrary to what is suggested above, the whole thing is MUCH better with the active voice. Note that in the case of "bring up," "up" is an adverb, not a preposition, so I am not ending the second sentence with a preposition.
• brudgers 15y ago
  The arbitrariness of grammar rules you mention is nothing compared with the standardization of spelling. I see a connexion between the motivations behind both - pedantry.
  • archgoon 15y ago
    In both cases, standardization of spelling and grammar, they have the role of streamlining communication. Try reading posts that have non-standardized spelling. If the spelling is phonetic based, you have to pause and think how the word sounds. Awkward grammatical sentences are hard to parse. There is a point to standardizing these things, though, past a certain point, it's a bit absurd and your point stands.
    • brudgers 15y ago
      Regarding phonetic spelling, non-phonetic spelling such as is found in English is unusual - the idea of a French or German spelling bee is incoherent. Even though a book such as Le Morte d'Arthur is unfamiliar at first, the spelling differences disappear pretty quickly once an English speaker's attention is focused on it.
• dhume 15y ago
  + You should never end a sentence with a preposition. (Sheer bullshit: English uses countless phrasal verbs ('throw away') and in many other cases avoiding the final preposition produces stuffy nonsense.) This is an ineffective counterexample. "Away" is an adverb, not a preposition.
  • telemachos 15y ago
    Hah: I'm a dope. I originally wrote 'throw up' and changed it because I thought people would object that it was informal. I picked 'throw away' pretty much at random, starting with 'throw', and I didn't even stop to analyze 'away'. I can no longer edit the original, but thanks for the correction.
  • lupatus 15y ago
    A better example might be, "Do you want to come with?"
    • glenjamin 15y ago
      Which is extremely informal, as the pronoum "me" or "us" is omitted from the end, but the context of usage would imply its presence.
    • aterimperator 15y ago
      But easily revised to "Do you want to come with us?" Not that I particularly think the rules are inviolable. I see them as guidelines: if you're using the passive voice then make sure that it won't be better in active. If you're ending with a preposition, then perhaps there's a clearer way to phrase it.
• ugh 15y ago
  (If you feel a bit like the author of this comment you might enjoy the Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/ http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/)
• hugh3 15y ago
  Well, everyone has their own standard. Rules falling within that standard are important for clarity, and rules outside that standard are needless and fussy. However... You should never end a sentence with a preposition. I like to follow this one, but only as a hobby, and not in casual conversation unless I'm talking to another pedant. I do admit that the syntactical knots into which I sometimes need to tie myself in order to avoid the preposition at the end make the sentence harder rather than easier to parse. On the other hand, sometimes prepositions at the end can make sentences harder to understand, in instances where the sentence seems to have a different meaning until you get to the preposition at the end. (I can't think of any examples right now.) You should never split an infinitive Agreed, that's just plain random. Never use the passive voice I have never heard this from anyone except Microsoft Word Grammar Check. Don't start sentences with 'but' or 'and' or 'however'. Now now, here I'm really going to have to disagree with you. "However" is reasonable, but "and" and "but" really belong in the middle of the sentence, not at the beginning. There are exceptional circumstances under which you can break this rule, but they're few and far between.
  • ghaff 15y ago
    I have to admit I use But, in particular, at the beginning of sentences fairly frequently. I usually follow the shorter is better rule when it comes to sentences and try to avoid long sentences that have semicolons and other non-period bridges.(Not always, but most of the time.) I find it tends to make writing snappier and easier to read.
  • Goladus 15y ago
    > Never use the passive voice > > I have never heard this from anyone except Microsoft Word Grammar Check. "Never" is definitely over-stated, but avoiding passive voice does tend to make writing more concise, clear, and engaging. Using passive voice habitually is probably just careless.
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  • msg 15y ago
    Using the passive voice is not recommended by me. A book was read by me that contained the rule against it: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Also a passage in Stephen King's On Writing that makes the same point was read by me a bit later in my life. In short, I do not recommend the passive voice. The Elements of Style has a rule against it, and I read the same point later in life in a passage from Stephen King's On Writing. But you don't have to believe them. You can figure out why they recommend it for yourself.
• masterzora 15y ago
  With the exception of the third point, I actually like all of these rules, kind of. However, I don't really like them as rules, per se, so much as guidelines. The thing of it is, if a sentence has been ended with a preposition, more often than not it can be rewritten in a clearer manner. Similarly, while passive voice is useful, to abundantly use it tends to make your writing dull and unclear. Similarly, split infinitives often obfuscate meaning, and sentences beginning with "but", "or", and", or "however" tend to be better served combined with the preceding sentence. Thus, as a general rule, I prefer for amateur writers to follow these guidelines as rules. That being said, once you know how to write well enough and you understand when these guidelines make your writing better and when they make it worse, for the love of $deity, please break them all over the place.
• jonnathanson 15y ago
  As the legend goes, the "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule was actually a revisionist prescription at some point in the (relatively recent) past. The goal was to make English more "elegant" and Latinate in its usage. This prescription actually flies in the face of English's origins. English did not derive from Latin, even though it borrows a lot of words and phrases from Latin. The rules of English grammar do not follow those of Latin, nor should they.
  • ahlatimer 15y ago
    Modern English is a hodgepodge of a variety of languages. The history of the language is really quite interesting, and I suggest anyone look into it if they have interest. If you try to read pre-Norman English today, you'd be hopelessly lost (unless you were previously trained to do so). Take a look at the original text of Beowulf and compare it to, say, the Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales is a rough read; Beowulf is unintelligible.
    • jonnathanson 15y ago
      True, although the rules of grammar and construction have not changed as dramatically as the vocabulary, spellings, or pronunciations have. Gramatically and syntactically speaking, English is still quite Germanic. That's why it is (supposedly) easy for a native English speaker to learn Dutch or German; their conjugations and sentence structures are more intuitive to us than those of the Romance languages.
• joeburke 15y ago
  "Where's the library at?" "You should never end a sentence with a preposition." "Where's the library at, jerk?"
• epo 15y ago
  Rules are useful limitations until you fully understand the subject, then you can break them. By following your "myths" you will avoid writing bad English, when you know what you are doing you can selectively break them for a desired effect.
• beagle3 15y ago
  If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. A preposition is a word you should never end a sentence with.
• jawee 15y ago
  Where has anyone ever said that a sentence cannot be started with "however," which is an adverb?