Grammar and Blogging Oppress Me

I have—or have had—a healthy variety of issues with different points of grammar over the years. Way too many to list here. (I love fragments, incidentally). Like Alex, I adored semicolons during my high school years; now I use them only sparingly. Still love them, though. When students come to the WC with semicolon-splashed papers, I feel a certain sense of kinship. I really do hate to take away their fun.

Contractions give me fits from time to time. I have to remind myself of the audience and tone. Academic papers = no contractions; newspaper = more is better. I remember being confused about its and it’s, but an editor cleared that up for me. He also helped me with that/which confusion. He didn’t explain it in terms of essential and nonessential clauses per se, but he did tell me that “which” clauses are surrounded by commas where “that” clauses are not. He said that the “which” clause can be removed from the sentence without causing a catastrophic loss of meaning (his words). For example, “I remember the day that I learned the grammar rule” versus “The grammar rules, which can sometimes be oppressive, are still necessary. I found his advice very helpful.

Who and whom drive me crazy, and like Tamar, I usually avoid using whom. I started out as one of those students Dr. Rogers talks about—the one that thought whom was a more formal form of who. Who can even say the word without sounding snooty? Eh? However, the way the rule was explained to me was this: Use who in a subject setting and whom in an object setting. Or avoid it altogether.

Now I’ll move on to my current grammar “issues.” The first involves punctuation use within quotations. I struggle with this one constantly, and seem to find conflicting information about what is deemed proper. Just when I think I have it figured, I’ll find an example of just the opposite in a textbook or novel. It’s making me insane… Provide insight, if you have it. I was taught that periods and commas always go inside quotation marks (MLA citations excepted). Dashes, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points go outside the quotations unless they only apply directly to the quoted matter.

Here’s another issue that I’d love to settle once and for all: academic degrees listed in writing. Do we capitalize or not? Whitby, Greg, and I tried to work this out the other day in the WC. Whitby was tutoring an FYE student who was trying to list some academic degrees in his paper. Greg and I offered conflicting advice. I was taught that degrees are NOT capitalized, as in “Jane has a master’s degree” or “He has a doctorate in psychology.” Degree abbreviations, though, are capitalized—“John Grammarman, PhD. But what about this: “I am working on a Bachelor of Arts degree”? Capitalize? No?

Incidentally, we also struggled to figure out if the terminology is “associate degree” or “associate’s degree” or, for that matter, “Associates Degree” or “Associate’s Degree.” Help. Please. I’m hoping to win some money from Greg.

Mind Your Grammars

Okay, confession time. First, I have never been an early bird, nor have I ever managed to get any of the proverbial worms (and have often wondered what's so great about being early if all you get for dragging yourself out of bed is a pile of cold-blooded hermaphroditic invertebrates). Second, I am not, and never have been, a grammar guru. I do, however, have a four hundred page book with the auspicious title "English Grammar," which I bought at a garage sale once for fifty cents because I thought, "Hey, I should probably know some of that stuff," and which is now sitting on the bookshelf in the basement next to the cat carrier, gathering dust (and probably cat hair).

Like Alex, it took being knocked off a pedestal to help me recognize my shortcomings in this area (which, as Hartwell suggested, should possibly be relegated to the desks of linguistic freaks along with glottal stops and bilabial fricatives). When I was growing up, my dad constantly corrected our grammar (and forbade the use of such redundancies as "tuna fish" and "these ones"), so I thought I had a pretty good command of it if only because I didn't say "we was" like the kid next door. In eighth grade, however, my teacher (you know the type--one of those junior high English teachers who reads Milton for fun and eats dangling modifiers for breakfast) found my Achilles heel, as she called it. She pointed out several places in my writing where I had used "they" instead of "he" or "she," and told me this was "Bad Grammar." Bad grammar?!? I was crushed. I never said "ain't," I pronounced "February" correctly, and I knew the difference between "your" and "you're"--I didn't use bad grammar. It was like someone suggesting that I had bad oral hygiene or didn't use deodorant. I was ashamed.

I probably should have rebelled and started some "Society for the Genderless Pronoun," fighting for the right to use they, them, their, and themselves as common-gender third person indefinite pronouns; instead, I succumbed to the almighty grammar rule and began wielding the cumbersome "he or she" in my writing (incidentally, it was this same teacher who told me to leave out the so-called "Oxford comma" when listing items--I didn't start using it again until college).

I was more careful--and insecure--about my writing after this. I tried to avoid the use of "whom," and didn't even dare ask what a split infinitive was. Luckily, I picked up some grammar rules in spite of my fervent wish that they would just go away. Studying Russian taught me about direct objects, and I learned to change the case of nouns (so that I could say "I love borscht" instead of "Borscht loves me"). This helped me translate the rule over to English and correctly use who and whom. The grammar checker in Word, so completely useless in nearly every other application, very politely pointed out to me with its friendly little green squiggly lines that there are some instances in which you use "that," and some that require "which." (If these rules still sometimes feel a bit fuzzy, as they do to me, you can build your "which/that" and "who/whom" muscle here)

I guess the great thing about grammar is that the rules are fluid, and constantly changing--just to give those linguists something to do with their spare time. In fact, Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, now says: "The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best, and of using the singular pronouns ... where you think they sound best." So there, Mrs. Dursteller.

Knocked Off of My Pedestal by Semi-Colons

Just like any good student learning the “process” of writing (thought I would throw in a little Murray), I have had various grammar problems throughout my educational career. I can remember issues with the difference between “effect/affect” and a minor problem with commas, but nothing was as eye-opening for me as my realization that I had a fetish with semi-colons. When I was in my AP English class my senior year of high school, I was often very proud of my essays that I would receive high grades on and some of which my teacher even used as an example of a “good” essay. While in the midst of my high and mighty belief in my own wonderful writing skills, something happened that humbled me for life (and it was, no doubt, a good thing that I was finally knocked off of my pedestal by someone). My teacher decided to send all of the students’ essays into her friend who was a professor in English for another perspective on our writing. When the essays came back, mine was once again put up on the projector but as my teacher went through it, pointing out its good and bad points, I noticed a funny pattern. On every page was a comment having something to do with semi-colons. Not only were there comments, but there were also funny little red circles around every semi-colon I had used. The amount of those funny little red circles ended up at averaging out to about one for every two sentences. Yeah. At the very end of the essay, the parting shot was for me to study up on the “rule about semi-colons” and drastically reduce my use of it. As I went back over my work, I realized that my overabundance of semi-colons mainly stemmed from my growing laziness in writing. I had apparently subconsciously decided that semi-colons could be used in the place of commas and periods. I had even used two semi-colons in the same sentence! After this experience, I vowed to never grow so lazy in my writing again by misusing a rule that was never meant to be misused.
The problem was, however, I couldn’t ever remember really learning the rule on semi-colons. Of course, I knew what they were obviously, but as most of us have realized, grammar lessons in third grade aren’t nearly enough to imbed principles in our heads for time and all eternity. So this grader could tell me as many times as she wanted to for me to change my use of it, but the fact was that I didn’t really have a way to learn the rule. So even though I cut down on my use of the grammar principle, I still didn’t know how to use it right. It honestly wasn’t until this year that I finally learned how to correctly implement semi-colons into my writing. Now I know that in order to use a semi-colon, I have to have two independent clauses that can be joined together with one, but at the time of this incident I really thought that I could use one anywhere I wanted within a sentence. This is a perfect example of grammar principles that are generally “lost” on the average population and is a reason that the teaching of grammar in schools is not nearly enough for the creation of good writers.

Grammar? Who Needs It?

I have problems with quite a few grammar problems. I don’t want to reveal all of my weaknesses to you so I will only talk about two. Hopefully that will give me a long enough post.
First, I do struggle with who/whom. I have an excuse. (Doesn’t everyone?) I had a linguistics professor who explained to us that the rule for the use of whom is Latin based. She told us that because our language is Germanic (among other things) that the rule does not actually apply. In her words there really is not a rule for who/whom and there isn’t really a right or wrong way to use it. Based upon this lecture by someone I regard as intelligent I decided to just move on from who/whom and not worry about the correct usage. I just try to avoid the use of who/whom in case someone who decides there should be a rule reads my paper and marks me down for it. So far it has worked well for me and I am just going to keep up with it. No one really understands the rule anyway, so does it matter?

The second rule that I always have a problem with is affect/effect. (Both of these rules are about confused words, but whatever) When I lived in Canada there was this little poster in the dorm about the correct usage of affect and effect. I memorized it, and decided it would help me use those words correctly. Of course I then forgot the rule. It had something to do with the idea that affect dealt with feelings and effect did not. Does that make sense to anyone else? It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. Recently, after the lecture by Claire, I decided to revisit these words and now that I understand one is a verb and one is a noun (except for the million exceptions) I feel a little more confident in their use. But I know I still use them incorrectly. One day (before this class) I was editing and sending out an email for work. After I sent it out I got an email response back from another co-worker who would not be considered a great writer. Usually when he sends me things to edit or write up I have to write a few emails back because I don’t understand what he is trying to say. His sentences are always fragments, he cannot tie ideas together, and he doesn’t even include all the necessary words in his sentences. (I really do love this guy, he’s wonderful to work with, but his writing needed help.) So the company sent him to a writing class. After he came back from this class, and I sent that email, he sent a reply back correcting my use of affect and effect. I was pretty embarrassed, since I was supposed to be the writing expert.

Sigh. Guess I will just have to keep working on that rule.

As Promised

Nick Mamatas, "The Term Paper Artist."

Get an Education and Pay Attention Along the Way

I used to have problems with which and that, until I took an advanced editing course and learned the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. That is how I cleared up that issue. The subjunctive was something I had never heard of until I took a grammar and usage class, then I knew what it was and how to use it. If I were still a freshman in college (note the use of the subjunctive), I still would not know this rule. Possessives also gave me trouble. But, again, getting a degree in English cleared up my confusion through various classes.

I can tell you the problems other working adults often have because of the pages I have tabbed in my copy of The Chicago Manual of Style from my time as an editor. I constantly had to explain these rules to my coworkers so they would stop attacking me for applying them. The first tab is "which & that." The next one is "possessive proper nouns." The third is "adjectival compounds." This one always throws people off because they want to hyphenate adverbs that occur before nouns. In other decades, we were allowed to hyphenate words that ended with -ly. But, this can occur no longer. The newness of this rule is the reason people get confused. The next tab in my book is "capitalizing hyphenated compounds." And, the last tab is "decades & apostrophes." People often like to add an apostrophe before the "s" in, say, 1980s, but the decade is not possessive, so this apostrophe is not necessary.

So, I guess my point is that I dealt with the grammar rules that gave me trouble by getting an education and paying attention along the way. Now, in my writing, I just need to make sure my pronoun references are clear and that I stop using pointless prepositional phrases. These issues are my current focus in the quest for writing that is clear and tight.

Early Birds, Worms, And The Getting Of Them

Here's an early prompt for the week.

What is the grammar principle/concept you have the most difficulty with?  Which/that?  Who/whom?  The Oxford comma?  How do you work it out?

And on a completely different subject, here is a blog post by an English professor in which she describes the process of helping students conduct research projects. I thought you all might find it interesting.