IWSG: Unlearning Grammar Rules

~ J.S. Pailly

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Beth Camp, Jean Davis, Yvonne Ventresca, and PJ Colando.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this awesomely supportive group!

Each month, IWSG asks members an optional question.  This month’s question is:

Since it’s back to school time, let’s talk about English class.  What’s a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

One of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me is: “You make me want to go learn stuff.”  I love learning.  I love learning about history, about mythology, about the arts, about science—most of all, I love learning about space!  But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a life-long learner is that you need to unlearn many of the things they taught you in school.  Today, I’d like to share a few rules of English grammar that I had to unlearn in order to become a better writer.

Thou shalt not split an infinitive.

I’m a Star Trek fan.  I’ve been hearing various captains of the starship Enterprise split infinitives my whole life, every time they say “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”  Aside from the fact that “to boldly go” sounds way cooler that “to go boldly,” there are instances where splitting or not splitting an infinitive might change the meaning of a sentence.  For example, “She decided to quickly fight back” does not mean the same thing as “She decided quickly to fight back.”

Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition.

There’s a famous quote about this rule.  “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”  I always thought that quote came from Winston Churchill, making him a staunch opponent of both real Nazis and grammar Nazis.  But while fact checking this blog post, I learned that there’s some dispute over whether or not Churchill really said this.

Anyway, the quote still illustrates what’s wrong with the “don’t end sentences with prepositions” rule.  Strict adherence to the rule can produce some cumbersome and convoluted writing.  Part of the problem is that sometimes what looks like a preposition is actually part of a phrasal verb: a string of words that function, grammatically, as a single verb.  “To put up with” is a phrasal verb, and “This is the sort of English I won’t put up with” would be a perfectly normal and natural English sentence.

Thou shalt not use “they” as a singular pronoun.

Okay, I’m going to gloss over the usage of “they/them” to refer to non-binary people, at least for now.  That’s related to the point I want to make, but it is not the main point I want to make.

In school, I was taught that “they,” “their,” and “them” must never be used to refer back to a singular noun.  For example, if somebody wrote “A person cannot help their birth,” this would be marked as wrong because “a person” is singular and “their” is supposedly plural.

But some pronouns do serve double duty.  For example, the word “you” does double duty as both a singular and plural pronoun, and there are examples in other languages of pronouns serving multiple grammatical functions as well.  Regarding singular they in English, it’s been around for centuries.  Examples can be found in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the King James Bible.  The example I used above comes from Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, published in 1848.

At some point in by life-long learning journey, I came across a more honest and accurate rule for the usage of singular they: they, their, and them can refer back to a singular noun when a plural noun in implied or when the gender of the singular noun is ambiguous (the ambiguous gender part then leads to the modern usage of they/them for non-binary people).

So why did my teachers in school tell me I can’t split an infinitive when Captain Kirk and Captain Picard did it so freely?  Why did they tell me I can’t end a sentence with a preposition when all I did was use a phrasal verb?  Why did they tell me not to use singular they when singular they has been part of the English language for hundreds and hundreds of years?  Because of Latin.

At some point in history, the intellectual class in England decided that English was too messy and improper of a language.  They looked at Latin, with all its noun declensions and elaborate verb conjugations, and said, “Now that’s what a right and proper language ought to be,” and they started to impose the rules of Latin grammar onto English.  And that’s why we have these dumb rules in our language today.

Now I love Latin.  It’s a fun and beautiful language, and I wish more people were familiar with it.  But English is a fun and beautiful language in its own right.  English is also a weird and quirky language, whereas Latin tends to be more rigid and strict.  So if you want to be a better writer of English (not Latin), it helps to unlearn some of those Latinesque rules we learned in school, and start to understand and appreciate the weirdness and quirkiness of natural English grammar.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

I’m going to recommend this article from JSTOR Daily, titled “Dear Pedants: Your Fav Gammar Rule is Probably Fake.”

Regarding singular they, a particularly controversial grammar issue these days, here’s an article from Medium entitled “Befuddled by Singular They?”

And lastly, if you’re looking for a deep dive into the history of English grammar, I highly recommend the book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter.

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Published by J.S. Pailly

17 thoughts on “IWSG: Unlearning Grammar Rules”

  2. I’ve always taken the attitude that I’m aiming for conversational language. Strangely enough, I don’t remember being dinged much about these things in my English classes. (But those were so long ago, I probably long ago repressed the trauma.)

    I’ve actually caught more grief from work colleagues or bosses when working on proposals and reports. Often they prefer a more formal style, which follows these kinds of rules. In my experience, that almost always makes the document harder to parse, usually to the detriment of whatever we’re trying to accomplish. But a lot of people seem to have seriously internalized it’s necessary for proper writing.

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    1. I kind of equate these sorts of grammar rules with dressing up in a tuxedo. It may not feel comfortable or natural, but in some situations, it’s expected that you do it anyway. I can be more formal in my writing if I need to, but that doesn’t mean I should write like that all of the time, or even most of the time (just as I wouldn’t wear a tuxedo most of the time).

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      1. Could be, but I’ve noticed even academic papers have become less formal than they were decades ago, and generally easier to read. I wonder if it’s part of the same trend where everyone dresses less formally today than they did fifty years ago. In that sense at least, the Counter-culture won.

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      2. Maybe so. I hadn’t really thought about it, but you’re right: academic papers have become less formal. Though I still think Carl Sagan wrote the easiest to read papers, even if he did use a more formal writing style than scientists today.

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      3. I’ve never read a Sagan scientific paper, just his popular stuff. But he was ahead of his time in many ways, so it doesn’t surprise me he found ways to make his stuff more approachable within the strictures of the time.

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  3. A few years ago, I attended an online grammar workshop where the presenter was adamant that “singular they” was grammatically incorrect, and the number of people who immediately went off on her in the chat was truly the highlight of that webinar!

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  5. It never even occurred to me that English was considered quirky, except maybe by us Latin people! Lol just kidding. We’ll, now that explains why you get so many gender specific pronouns in Latin derived languages like Spanish and Portuguese.

    As tough as English is said to be by people whose first language is a Romance language (and I can see how) those languages can borrow a few gender neuter pronouns and rules from English in this age where more people are coming out non-binary or so when both sexes need to be referred to they don’t need to keep using slashes (he/she) or going back and forth from sentence to sentence between he and she.

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    1. I’ve heard it’s been a big issue in France. There was a big fight a few years ago over whether the French word for president should still be masculine if a woman happens to hold the office. Plus there are all these new technology words that need to have genders assigned to them. It’s a real problem. I’m sure its a real problem in other romance language countries, too.

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  6. What often annoys me is the Oxford comma. It has its uses and as such serves a purpose, but blind adherence to it is, in my opinion, irrational. Sometimes it is needed, sometimes not. Even worse, in my eyes at least sometimes it is redundant. Long ago there was a time I had a couple of volunteer copy editors who worked for me who were older and who often got pretty insistent on the Oxford comma. Although I liked them very much, the blind annoyance to a rule of style bugged me a lot.

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    1. I could see that being frustrating. I’m an Oxford comma user myself. It feels natural to me to use it, and I usually put it in without thinking about it. But I’m not going to go around telling other writers they have to use it, too. That is, as you said, a matter of style.

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    1. It was a real eye opener for me when I first learned about it. I took two years of Latin in high school. It’s a beautiful language, but the grammar is very different. There’s no good reason why we should be applying Latin grammar rules to English.

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