Uh-oh. I’ve been outed as ‘a dog person’.
While I was amongst it, as they say, I came across this article, 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice, by Geoffrey Pullum, co-author of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (via The Mumpsimus). From the title, you will be able to guess that Pullum doesn’t think ‘pon this little book with approval. In fact, he says that the authors are ‘grammatical incompetents’, Strunk having ‘very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less’. Ouch. I had noticed a few things that perturbed me, particularly over-rigid and outdated rules such as the exhortation not to start a sentence with ‘however’ when the meaning is ‘nevertheless’. Er, doesn’t everyone do that? Pullum agrees. He declares the advice in The Elements of Style anything from ‘sensible’ to ‘toxic’.
Some wisdom can be had from this book, especially for those like me whose education did not explicitly deal with the rudiments of grammar and style. (Is it just me, or is the Australian educational system a bit hands-off with those aspects of writing?) The authors counsel the writer to ‘omit needless words’, an oft-heard dictum which blessedly rings in my own ears from time to time, perhaps not often enough. The Elements of Style is also entertaining, an artifact recalling a grumpy professor who had probably corrected one too many crappy essays. For example, Rule 21 urges the unknowing to ensure that summaries are written in the same tense throughout. The authors plaintively disparage useless generalisations:
Facility: Why must jails, hospitals, and schools suddenly become “facilities”?
Yet, as with any book spawned by human beings with proclivities and their opposities, readers should be wary of taking the rules as gospel. Some of the rules are specific to a geographical usage area, such as S&W’s US-flavoured preference for the serial comma (the comma appearing before the ‘and’ separating the final item in a list, as in: ‘She ate apples, cakes, and radishes.’) and veteran language mavens will find some of the rules gratingly basic. Other times, the authors distill their irritation into rules that are unforgivably misformed. Take the explanatory section expanding on rule 22: ‘Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.’ Fine, except that halfway through this section appears the somewhat silly assertion: ‘The other prominent position in the sentence is the beginning.’
I’m in two minds about this book. On the one hand, The Elements of Style is a fascinating cult book, and certainly you can learn something from its pages. Actually, it’s not so cult: have you ever wondered why your Microsoft Word document has so many goddamn green zigzag lines through it? You’re probably using too much passive language, one of the S&W bugbears. But as a reference, I don’t recommend it, particularly for an Australian/British English writer. Its reasonable advice can be easily found elsewhere, and its deleterious propositions have actually muddled in my head with other, more legitimate fodder. It’s not particularly comprehensive, either, and non-US writers are better off picking a guide that is more appropriate to their writing region.
As I mentioned earlier, my bet for stylistic curmudgeon is Fowler, even as somewhat tempered by Burchfield. Pam Peters’ The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage is an up-to-date, non-prescriptivist behemoth for antipodean enthusiasts. For US writers, The Mumpsimus recommends Huddleston & Pullum’s A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar, Harper’s English Grammar by John Opdycke, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage and Patterns of English by Paul Roberts. If anyone out there champions any other Australian/British English usage guides, I’d love to hear what they are.
