ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

'just because it is in, say, amazon.com'

yeah but making it LOOK like 'amazon.com' sure does make it seem like you should read it out, which is a bold choice when you actually are also spelling out the dot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKfUpKgl0w8

http://daily.jstor.org/grammar-rule-is-probably-fake/

I have to be honest. I always enjoyed the rules of grammar as taught to me, and definitely embraced being a "grammar nerd" as part of my identity for a long time. But over time, and sincerely thanks to ILX pointing me to articles like that and specifically La Lechera, I've come to see the error of my prescriptivist ways. It makes me kind of sad to lose that part of my identity but it's also really liberating and probably makes me a better person generally.

That article just seems like a popularizing rehash of the descriptive vs prescriptive argument. It seems to me like the argument is over and the descriptivists won. The residue of prescriptivism will die off very gradually because conservatives cling to simple and traditional rules no matter how irrational they are. Whereas ordinary people will just continue to ignore the entire argument and successfully communicate with each other. They'll also continue to become confused whenever they try to remember what the 'real rules' are.

descriptivism is true but that doesn't mean you should give up the struggle for linguistic dominance, you should just revel in the all-the-more naked pursuit of the power of language

<3 carl

It seems to me like the argument is over and the descriptivists won.
YES finally
people are even starting to value the opinions of linguists in other matters as well!

and as a language teacher, i obvs see the value in rules and guidelines and even using prescribed sentence structure. however, ime most of the rules that people freaked about were more of a display of linguistic privilege than anything else.
now we can all get back to criticising people for any number of other things

Oh good

yeah, i'm not a language instructor, though i had to teach it for a very short while. wasn't a fan.

now that i'm living with someone whose native language isn't english, it's difficult to explain a lot of things she hears on the television, movies, or just from random people. i mention a general rule and she gets confused by its exceptions or just lack of logic or coherency in the english language.

i love being a language teacher
it's fun + empowering + requires energy and creativity

the argument is over and the descriptivists won

Maybe, but there is still a viable middle path. I don't know what to call it - maybe the Garnerian Compromise?

Instead of arguing prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, I generally just speak in terms of sensitivity to target audience. If you think your audience believes in this or that "rule," and you wish to be persuasive to that audience, it's reasonable for you to follow the "rule" or avoid the situation somehow.

I don't follow rules because I like rules, I follow them because I like paychecks. And the most important audience member is the person who signs the check. So when I am working for someone who hates sentence-ending prepositions, I don't use them. When I am working for someone who doesn't care, I don't care either. When I am working for someone who likes AP style, I follow it; if the next gig is for someone who prefers Chicago, I follow that.

Similarly, I don't trim my toenails because I care all that much about my toenails, I trim them because my wife cares about them, and I like sleeping with her.

you are a pragmatist

I generally just speak in terms of sensitivity to target audience.

I would place this in the province of rhetoric rather than grammar, and within the bounds of rhetoric prescriptive rules can be quite valuable. If there were a board called I Love Rhetoric I would be all over it.

Yeah, that's pretty much what David Foster Wallace says about Bryan Garner here. Wallace was sometimes kind of unhinged about this topic (I say that with affection), but the central argument is that A Dictionary of Modem American Usage was rhetorical in its approach. Not saying "this is the rule because I said so," but saying "if you want a certain kind of person to take you seriously, follow these guidelines."

I make my living by writing persuasive prose for generally conservative audiences. As a result, I have to cultivate a somewhat formal register. And I have to follow "rules" that I know are often pretty silly and baseless.

Me, too, which is actually pretty satisfying because it's a good outlet for my erstwhile grammar dorkery and I can get my prescriptivist ya yas out pitching fits about Oxford commas and the like in a safe space for pedantry.

I really try to avoid grammar/punctuation pedantry but one thing that always bugs me is "that" instead of "who"; e.g. in this headline: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/880-five-women-in-hip-hop-that-deserve-their-own-biopics/. I don't even know if it's wrong per se but it always irritates me.

can't solve that problem but lately been using what instead of who/that to comedic effect

you should always use 'who' with people
that's a rule i can get behind because it distinguishes people as special, and i find that an amusing grammatical narcissism

That's not what we teach

here who can be restrictive or nonrestrictive; that is for restrictive clauses, which is for nonrestrictive

xp. you mean who's not that we teach

which that who we teach that which we teach

feel like there's an epidemic recently of ppl who are never phased by anything

I hear there's a big demand for that talent in the torture and execution industries.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/oct/06/steven-pinker-alleged-rules-of-writing-superstitions

good writing depends an ability to imagine a generic reader 

sounds like a good way to write a generic book

that is so wrong I can't even begin

I mean tbf it's probably not bad advice for someone trying to write mass audience non-fiction.

Personally, I only write for left-handed dental hygienists with Swedish ancestry. Everyone else can go suck it. For extra obscurity I generally write a first draft in pig latin, then have it translated into hieroglyphics and then into Swahili.

Perhaps if "generic" is the part that bothers you, why not substitute "ideal"?

Or just "intended."

I submit there is a world of difference between "generic" and "intended".

Railing against the split infinitive "rule" at this point is almost as dusty as the rule. However, generally speaking, careful usage is an indicator of, though by no means inextricable from, careful thought. "Entering the room, it was nice to see my old friends" may not be unclear, but "Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is -- is the speaker entering the room or Jessica? Following the usage "rule" prevents that kind of sloppiness.

Agreed (to both Aimless and man alive)

is the speaker entering the room or Jessica

wait, LOL

I rest my case.

I find this bit irritating:

Any competent copy editor can turn a passage that is turgid, opaque, and filled with grammatical errors into a passage that is turgid, opaque, and free of grammatical errors.

A good copy editor can (and should) also keep it from being turgid and opaque. Or, if the passage cannot be rescued, recommend its deletion or query until the meaning is clear.

As man alive notes, these pop rule-refutations are themselves ancient. Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins is my age (we were both published in 1971). I guess this may be news to some readers out there, but no editors or writers are surprised by them in the year two thousand fifteen.

yeah i'm not sure who pinker is railing against. i actually find myself agreeing w/ him much of the time, but he seems to fuel his own writing by heaping a lot of straw men on the fire.

imo things have shifted over the last ten to fifteen years - it might be my internet bubble, but a (loosely) descriptivist or usage-driven version of advice for clarity feels on top right now. Pinker's trailing this larger shift, & it seems fine - having a noisy pop academic on side is useful because the straw-men really are out there - useless usage rules seem to be extraordinarily sticky.

btw I don't disagree in principle about dangling participles – I'll only leave them if I'm editing to a pretty informal style - but I don't think "Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is unclear. Jessica is entering the room.

& that's not because of a style-guide rule, but more because of descriptive grammar: the participle latches on to the subject of the sentence; with a dummy subject, it attaches to the implied speaker. (not a linguist, that's a rough guess at the working rule)

"As she entered the room, Jessica came into the room" is 1000x as clear.

otm

editing non-writers in the past couple years, i saw an ENORMOUS amount of '[ me ] arriving at the location, the associate [ i.e. someone else] greeted me warmly'

"As she entered the room, Jessica came into the room" is 1000x as clear.

― I might like you better if we Yelped together (Phil D.), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 2:57 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh, see, everyone needs an editor.

let's get back to the topic of entering Jessica

"Entering the room, Jessica came into my view" is 100% clear if you assume the writer is writing with proper usage. That's my point. If you don't stick to that rule, then you can wind up writing one thing when you mean the other.

I mean in Pinker's example it works ok because the "it" doesn't represent a specific thing or object, just an idiomatic way of saying that he felt happy. 95% of the time, it actually would be unclear to write that sentence without the subject of the sentence following the comma.

After entering the room, who came into my view but Jessica!

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/comma-queen-spelling-insurance?mbid=social_twitter

this woman regularly infuriates me

"true, ensure and insure mean different things, but we use insure for everything, why because the style guide some says to use the 'in-' form for every 'en-/in-" prefix, well that is not counting this long list of exceptions"

DIE

Wait, so this person has been proofreading for the country's leading high-middlebrow rag since 1978 and still doesn't get the difference between these two words? How can this be?