How grammatically sound are you?
I, of course, am a grammar god.
But even I would consider it precious to employ all the usage rules implied by that quiz in any other context.
I think being a usage wonk boils down merely to choosing which windmills to tilt at. By the time an error is so common as to be corrected in usage guides, it’s clear that the battle has already been lost.
(Discussing which battles I fight constitutes a spoiler for the quiz. If you want to take it, chase the link above before reading further.)
Some of my quixotic battles:
- the subjunctive voice
- “12 items or fewer”
- refusing to use “they” as a third person singular1
- “lay” and “lie”
- using correct cases for objects of prepositions and verbs, and for predicate nominatives, e.g., “whom,” “It is I”
- number agreement, including using “everyone” as singular
Some I’m not interested in that were represented in the quiz:
- insisting upon “that” to the exclusion of “who” for an anonymous animal
- refusing to split an infinitive (I was surprised to see that hoary old chestnut on the quiz)
I avoid ‘impact’ as a verb, but not ‘contact’ (or ‘network’ or any of dozens of other verbed nouns in techspeak.) I’m usually pedantic about word choice. “Irregardless,” confusing “flout” and “flaunt,” the construction “try and do” in place of “try to do” — all these things grate on me, as do many others. Fortunately, I’ve gotten better about correcting people (oh, yeah, and I accept “fortunately,” et al, as particles instead of insisting upon, e.g., “it is fortunate that.”)
In another couple of generations, probably at least 75% of these will seem as quaint and irrelevant to young English speakers as avoiding splitting infinitives seems to me, even to people reading usage guides.
But I’ll persist, because, well, I really like being excruciatingly correct.
(By the way, I’m sure it’s not a very great challenge to find some usage errors in my MMG! entries. My tone here is normally casual; if I held everything to the highest standards of copy editing, I’d post less, and I don’t want that.)
1 Yes, I know Shakespeare used it that way. Dude also couldn’t spell his own name the same way twice.
=v= I, on the other hand, am a proponent of the singular "they." Shakespeare used it that way because that was the parlance (still is), and this use predated the now-"correct" rule that masculine terms would be used as generics. It also has the advantage that, in context, it's nearly always clear whether one is speaking in the singular or plural. This is usually not true of generic use of male pronouns (which usually prompts people to think of males rather than both sexes).
I strive to make my language use as nonsexist as possible, but not to constantly draw attention to the fact. So usually I'll avoid the issue, either by pluralizing those indeterminate sexes (who all become "they") or using the second person or somesuch.
I found it pretty jarring that Tom Robbins wrote Even Cowboys Get The Blues according to the masculine-as-generic "rule," which put lengthy philosophical ponderings about "man" and "his" nature in the mouths of separatist lesbians. Sometimes you can be really wrong by being correct. I was tickled to see that he later wrote himself into a corner in Jitterbug Perfume in which he had to use a singular "they."
Posted by Jym on June 3 2004 13:05
I was a grammar god when grammar wasn't cool.
I think I'm still the only person on Earth who always types in complete, properly punctuated sentences in online chat programs. Years of experience in this, and my stubborn refusal to take a course in keyboarding, has made me the world's fastest two-finger typer.
Posted by Jimcat on June 4 2004 11:12
I said nothing in defense of "he" as a gender neutral third person singular, Jym; I don't use it that way. I just don't like getting number wrong to avoid getting gender wrong.
Posted by Zed on June 5 2004 07:49
=v= Yep, you didn't defend "he" as a generic, it's true. Sorry I came across that way. My position is that the only reason the singular "they" is now considered incorrect is that 18th-century grammarians decided to impose the generic "he" as correct. They were trying to improve and uplift English by retroactively applying grammar from Latin — something I actually appreciate — but I think they overdid it by imposing masculine pronouns on an ungendered language.
Posted by Jym on June 8 2004 06:44