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).

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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.